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t 



CHRONICLES OF THE 
WHITE MOUNTAINS 




THE FLUME, BEFORE THE BOULDER FELL 

The Boulder (shown lodged between the Walls) fell into the Stream during 

a Storm and Flood in June, 1883 



CHRONICLES OF THE 
WHITE MOUNTAINS 



BY 



■^ 



FREDERICK W. KILBOURNE 



IVii/i Illustrations 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1916 



>\ 



f^/' 



COPYRIGHT, I916, BY FREDERICK W. KILBOURNE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published May iqib 



4>^ 

MAY 22 1916 

^Cl.A43yOVl 



B.P., J.P.K., AND H.R.H. 



IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Mountains in whose vast shadows live great names, 
On whose firm pillars rest mysterious dawns, 
And sunsets that redream the apocalypse; 
A world of billowing green that, veil on veil, 
Turns a blue mist and melts in lucent skies; 
A silent world, save for slow waves of wind, 
Or sudden, hollow clamor of huge rocks 
Beaten by valleyed waters manifold; — 
Airs that to breathe is life and joyousness; 
Days dying into music; nights whose stars 
Shine near, and large, and lustrous; these, these, 
These are for memory to life's ending hour. 

Richard Watson Gilder 



PREFACE 

Allen H. Bent, in the Introduction to his ad- 
mirable Bibliography of the White Mountains, pub- 
lished in 191 1, makes the doubtless somewhat sur- 
prising remark that "the White Mountains . , . 
have had more written about them, probably, than 
any other mountains, the Alps alone excepted." 
When one seeks an explanation for this circum- 
stance, that a district of so limited area and moun- 
tains of such relatively low elevation have received 
an apparently disproportionate amount of literary 
attention, one may find it, in part at least, as 
pointed out by the author ^ of an article printed now 
nearly twenty-five years ago, in the facts that these 
mountains are the only considerable group worthy 
of the name of mountains in the northeastern United 
States and that they are, with the exception of the 
until recently almost unknown and comparatively 
inaccessible Southern Appalachians of North Caro- 
lina, the only highlands of scenic consequence in the 
eastern part of the country. The facts just named, 
coupled with that of the nearness of the White 
Mountains to the North Atlantic coast and their 
consequent accessibility to the people of the earliest 
settled portion of the United States and to European 
visitors to America as well, early rendered them 

1 William Howe Downes in "The Literature of the White Moun- 
tains," New England Magazine, August, 1891. 

ix 



PREFACE 

widely famed for their scenery and thus drew to 
them the attention of the makers of books. 

If it should be Inquired, further, why these hills, 
so Insignificant as compared with the Rockies, for 
instance, should have been made so much of and 
should still retain so much of men's interest, it may 
be adduced that as respects mountains in general 
scenic attractiveness depends far more upon other 
considerations than that of altitude for its appeal 
and that the White Mountains are a striking case 
in support of this opinion, for it is the testimony of 
travelers that the relative inferiority in height of the 
New England hills does not detract from their 
grandeur and beauty or cause them to lose interest 
for those familiar with loftier peaks and ranges. 
Indeed, it is doubtful if any other mountains of any- 
thing like their altitude are more impressive or 
stupendous in aspect, and, as to the character of 
the landscape views they offer for the pleasure of 
the beholder, it is enough to say that they prove the 
truth of Humboldt's dictum — "The prospect from 
minor mountains is far more interesting than that 
from extreme elevations, where the scenery of the 
adjacent country is lost and confounded by the 
remoteness of its situation." At any rate, the ap- 
peal of the White Hills to the imagination of men 
has always been strong, and therein lies the chief 
reason for the existence of so many books about 
them. 

In view of this fact of there being so voluminous 
a literature on the subject, the preparation of 
another volume to be added to such an apparent 



PREFACE 

plethora would seem at first blush to be, if not an 
absolutely gratuitous performance, at leeist a work 
of supererogation. The only circumstance that may 
be brought forward to justify the undertaking of 
such a project must be the notion that the book fills 
a gap — occupies, as it were, a field that is not now 
cultivated and that has been for a long time neg- 
lected — and thus supplies a need. Such, in any 
event, is my belief, and it is to the historical side of 
the subject that I allude. 

Let me name and briefly characterize the princi- 
pal books on the White Mountains and thereby 
achieve, if I can, the double purpose of demonstrat- 
ing that there is such a lack in this literature as I 
have just maintained to exist, and of acknowledging 
some of the sources of the information I shall present 
later on. 

The first extended and detailed descriptions of the 
scenery of the region are those which are to be found 
in volume II of President Dwight's Travels in New 
England and New York, published in 1821. The 
Mountains were first descriptively dealt with to 
such an extent as to be the exclusive subject of a 
separate volume, by the botanist William Oakes, 
whose Scenery of the White Mountains, with sixteen 
lithographic plates, appeared in 1848. The scenic 
beauties of the region were delineated and inter- 
preted in poetry and poetic prose by the genius of 
Starr King, whose The White Hills; their Legends, 
Landscape and Poetry, originally published in 1859- 
60, is a classic of mountain literature and will doubt- 
less ever remain the best book of its kind about the 

xi 



PREFACE 

Mountains. The Reverend Julius H. Ward's The 
White Mountains; a Guide to their Interpretation 
(1890^), is another work, to quote from the author's 
preface, " written in illustration of the modern inter- 
pretation of Nature which has been taught us by- 
Emerson and Wordsworth and Ruskin." In this 
volume of Ward's, the scenery of different localities 
is described and the emotions evoked and thoughts 
suggested by mountain peaks or groups and other 
scenic features of the district are presented. Samuel 
Adams Drake, in his The Heart of the White Moun- 
tains, their Legend and Scenery, with illustrations by 
W. Hamilton Gibson (1881), not only describes the 
region, but gives a wealth of legendary, historical, 
and other information. Mr. Gibson's pictures are, it 
may be remarked in passing, of high merit, giving, 
as they do perhaps better than any others, an ade- 
quate idea of the height, massiveness, and precipi- 
tousness of the mountain walls, as well as of the 
beauties of landscape and of forest scenery. 

The scientific aspects of the region have been 
thoroughly studied and extensively set forth in a 
multitude of books and articles written by a host of 
trained and competent scholars and observers, in- 
cluding Oakes, Tuckerman, Hitchcock, Huntington, 
Agassiz, Guyot, Scudder, Slosson, and Emerton, 
while the natural history has been amply and well 
taken care of in the books of the late Frank Bolles, 
the late Bradford Torrey, Winthrop Packard, and 
others. 

The field of the guide-book is fairly well covered 

1 Third edition, 1896. 
xii 



PREFACE 

by Chisholm's White Mountain Guide-Booh, prepared 
originally by the late M. F. Sweetser. The same 
writer's The White Mountains; a Handbook for Trav- 
elers, which embodies the results of thorough and 
extensive explorations made in 1875, was first pub- 
lished in 1876 and was last revised down to 1896, the 
year before its editor's death. It is the most com- 
plete local guide I have ever seen, and revision to 
date is all that is needed to make it still of excep- 
tional value. Baedeker's United States contains an 
accurate and comprehensive section on the Moun- 
tains. The Appalachian Mountain Club published 
in 1907 the first part of a valuable Guide to the 
Paths and Camps in the White Mountains. Part II 
will be published this year. 

The history of the White Mountains is literary 
ground that has been for the most part untilled for 
many years. Frank H. Burt, editor of Among the 
Clouds in succession to his father, prints regularly 
a valuable chronology (copyrighted) in his paper, 
and in his booklet Mount Washington, published in 
1904, he has given a summary of the history of the 
chief peak and various items of historical information 
about the Mountains generally. Sweetser's White 
Mountains contains an abundance of historical 
material, mainly in the form of notes. The principal 
historical works on the Mountains are more than 
half a century old and are out of print. Lucy 
Crawford's The History of the White Mountains from 
the First Settlement of Upper Coos and Pequaket was 
first published in 1846; J. H. Spaulding's Historical 
Relics of the White Mountains appeared in 1855; and 

xiii 



PREFACE 

Benjamin G. Willey's Incidents in White Mountain 
History dates also from 1855.^ 

None of these is a systematic chronicle of events. 
The first is not a history, as it purports to be, but is 
in reality mostly an autobiography of the pioneer 
Ethan Allen Crawford, apparently dictated in large 
part by him to his wife, the nominal author. It is 
full of interesting information, simply and often 
quaintly set down, about the early days. The second 
is a very miscellaneous collection of Indian legends, 
old traditions, and brief relations of early events and 
incidents, some of which were important and many 
trivial, with accounts of some later occurrences of 
which the author had personal knowledge. The last 
is the most serious attempt to write the history of 
the district. It presents, without much sense of 
proportion, a great body of information concerning 
the pioneer days in the region, much of it in the 
form of anecdotes illustrating backwoods life, and is 
especially full in its account of the destruction of the 
author's brother's family and in Indian history and 
traditions. 

It is this last long unoccupied and never ade- 
quately cultivated field that I have attempted to 
till, with the result that follows and constitutes 
the body of this work. 

The existence of Mr. Bent's Bibliography ^ renders 

^ The date of publication is 1856. It was reissued, with minor 
revisions and under the title, History of the White Mountains, by 
Frederick Thompson in 1870. 

'^ The Society of American Foresters has published an extensive 
and valuable Bibliography of the Southern Appalachian and White 
Mountain Regions, compiled by Helen E. Stockbridge. It dates also 
from 191 1. 

xiv 



PREFACE 

superfluous the appending of any to this book. My 
indebtedness is to many writers. Much information 
was obtained also from correspondents. To all I 
make grateful acknowledgment. I have examined 
many guide-books, books of travel, newspapers (par- 
ticularly Among the Clouds and the White Mountain 
Echo), and other sources. Specific obligations, not 
hereinbefore acknowledged by naming books, will 
appear in place. Pains have been taken to verify 
quotations and statements by going to the original 
sources whenever I could obtain access to them. I 
have purposely refrained from adding footnotes un- 
less some additional information contributed or side- 
light thrown thereby seemed to warrant them. Mere 
references to the places or authorities cited I have 
omitted, as interruptions to the reading and affecta- 
tions of scholarliness. 

A word, in conclusion, as to the guiding principle 
followed in selecting subjects for illustration. As 
this is a work dealing more especially with man's 
associations with the region and his modifications of 
the appearance of it, the pictures presented should 
have to do mostly with human works. Whenever 
a picture combining scenic with historical interest 
could be used, the idea of doing so was kept in 
mind, but, in general, in the presentation of illus- 
trations, emphasis has been laid, properly, upon 
the historical side of this matter. * 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION Xxiu 

I. INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY .... I 
II. EARLY EXPLORERS 1 7 

III. FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS : I. THE 

TOWNS 39 

IV. FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS: II. THE 

SOLITARY PLACES — THE WILLEY DISASTER "JO 

V. FURTHER DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS — 
SOME NOTED AMERICAN VISITORS OF THE 
EARLY DAYS lOI 

VI. SOME FOREIGN VISITORS AND THEIR AC- 
COUNTS OF THEIR TOURS OF THE WHITE 
MOUNTAINS 139 

VII. THE^ EARLY HOTELS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF 

THE REGION AS A SUMMER RESORT . .154 

VIII. THE POETS AND PAINTERS IN THE WHITE 

HILLS 175 

IX. THE LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS OF THE 

MOUNTAINS 204 

X. THE COMING OF THE RAILROADS — THEIR 

LATER EXTENSIONS 220 

XI. THE HOTELS ON MOUNT WASHINGTON — THE 
CARRIAGE ROAD AND THE MOUNT WASH- 
INGTON RAILWAY — HOTELS AND SHELTERS 
ON OTHER SUMMITS 229 

xvii 



CONTENTS 

xii. some noteworthy white mountain 

"characters" 259 

xiii. casualties on the presidential range — 
the terrible experience of dr. ball — 
some destructive landslides . . 267 

xiv. winter ascents of mount washington — 
the winter occupation of mount 
moosilauke and of mount washing- 
ton — the u.s. signal service on 
mount washington 305 

xv. later hotels 331 

xvi. early trails and path-builders — the 
appalachian mountain club and its 
work in the white mountains . . 345 

xvii. the great fire on mount washington — 

other recent events of interest . 36o 

xviii. the lumber industry in the white 
mountains — the peril of the forests 
— the white mountain national for- 
est—other reservations .... 377 

xix. the changes in the character of white 
mountain travel and business in re- 
cent years 405 

INDEX 411 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE FLUME BEFORE THE BOULDER FELL FrOUtispiece '' 

From a photograph by F. G. Weller 

THE DEATH OF CHOCORUA 12 

From an engraving by G. W. Hatch after the painting by Thomas 
Cole 

THE NOTCH HOUSE 86 "^ 

From an engraving by J. Cousen In Willis's American Scenery, after 
a drawing by W. H. Bartlett 

THE WILLEY HOUSE QO 

From an engraving by E. Benjamin in Willis's American Scenery, 
after a drawing by W. H. Bartlett 

THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN .... I02 
From a photograph by Blair, Bretton Woods, N. H. 

THE OLD MOUNT CRAWFORD HOUSE AT BEMIS . 1 58 

From Starr King's The White Hills, Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1887 

THE FRANCONIA NOTCH, WITH THE LAFAYETTE 
HOUSE 166 

From a lithograph by J. H. BufiFord, Boston, in Oakes's White Moun- 
tain Scenery, after a drawing by Isaac Sprague 

THE OLD PROFILE HOUSE, OPENED 1 853, CLOSED 

1905 170 

From a photograph by F. G. Weller 

THE FLUME HOUSE 1 70 

An old view showing the house when smaller than at present 

A VIEW NEAR CONWAY 1 92 

From an engraving by Fenncr, Sears & Co., after a painting by 
Thomas Cole 

xix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE DOUBLE GATE OF CRAWFORD NOTCH . . 226 '' 

From a photograph by Blair 

HALFWAY HOUSE ON THE CARRIAGE ROAD . . 234 ^ 

From a photograph by the Shorey Studio, Gorham, N. H. 

Jacob's ladder, mount Washington railway . 240 

Showing the early type of locomotive with vertical boiler 

From a heliotype in M. F. Sweetser's Views in the White Mountaim 

SUMMIT HOUSE AND OBSERVATORY, MOUNT WASH- 
INGTON, ABOUT 1895 250 

From a photograph by Peter Eddy, Fabyan, N. H. 

THE NEW SUMMIT HOUSE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON, 

ERECTED AND OPENED IN I915 . . . . 25O / 

From a photograph by the Shorey Studio 

SUMMIT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON IN 1 854: TIP-TOP 
HOUSE, OLD SUMMIT HOUSE, AND FIRST OBSERV- 
ATORY 256 

From Willey'a Incidents in White Mountain History 

TIP-TOP HOUSE ON MOUNT MOOSILAUKE . . . 256^ 

From a copyright photograph by F. C. Jackson, Warren, N. H., 1913 

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT .... 264 

From a photograph by Peter Eddy 

CURTIS MONUMENT, LAKE OF THE CLOUDS, AND 

A. M. C. HUT 278 

From a photograph by the Shorey Studio 

CLIMBING MOUNT WASHINGTON IN WINTER . . 306 

From a photograph by the Shorey Studio 

OBSERVER, SUMMIT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON, ABOUT 

1875 .316 

From a photograph by B. W. Kilbum 
XX 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE SUMMIT HOUSE IN WINTER, ABOUT 1 875 . 316 
From a photograph by B. W. Kilbum 

THE FIRST GLEN HOUSE 338 

From a heliotype in M. F. Sweetser's Views in the White Mountains 

THE SECOND GLEN HOUSE, 1885-I893 . . . 338 

From the Glen House Book, 1889 

THE MOUNT WASHINGTON HOTEL, BRETTON WOODS 342 
From a photograph by Blair 

THE MOUNT PLEASANT TRAIL 35O 

From a photograph by Blair 

A. M. C. HUTS ON MOUNT MADISON .... 35O 

From a photograph by the Shorey Studio 

A. M. C. HUT ON MOUNT MONROE .... 354 
From a photograph by the Shorey Studio 

MOUNT MONROE HUT INTERIOR .... 354 

From a photograph by the Shorey Studio 

THE FIRE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON AS SEEN FROM 

GORHAM 364 

From a photograph by Guy L. Shorey 

LOST RIVER 372 

From a photograph 

MAP OF THE WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST 398 
ROAD AND TRAIL MAP OF THE WHITE MOUNTAIN 

REGION . , . • ^ • ^ ' End paper 



INTRODUCTION 

Seventy miles in an air line from the Atlantic, 
northwesterly from Portland, Maine, lies the grand 
and beautiful group of stern and lofty hills, with 
rugged valleys and gentle intervales interspersed, 
which is called by the commonplace appellation of 
the "White Mountains," or, sometimes, especially 
in literary use, the "White Hills." This name is 
applied both to the entire group (made by some to 
include, besides the New Hampshire ranges and 
peaks, the neighboring hills in western Maine), and 
also, specifically, to the range containing the highest 
peaks, now comm.only designated, for obvious rea- 
sons, the "Presidential Range." 

In the nomenclature of physical geography these 
northern hills are termed monadnocks, a name given 
to more or less isolated residual elevations composed 
of rock which has resisted the general wearing-down 
of the former plateau, of which the heights formed 
a part, to the present peneplain. Geologically, the 
White Mountains belong to the older or crystalline 
belt of the Appalachian system and are made up of 
ancient metamorphic rocks, chiefly gneisses with a 
core of granite forming the highest portion. The area 
of the region is about 812,000 acres. 

The epithet "White" alludes, of course, to the 
appearance of the summits and seems most appro- 
priate in the six months, more or less, when they 

xxiii 



INTRODUCTION 

print as a distinctive name, it is believed, in Josse- 
lyn's New England's Rarities Discovered, a work pub- 
lished in 1672.^ 

Drake, who holds strongly to the opinion that the 
name of the Mountains does not allude to the pres- 
ence of snow on them, declares that "the early 
writers succeed only imperfectly in accounting for 
this phenomenon [the white appearance of the sum- 
mits], which for six months of the year at least," he 
says, "has no connection whatever with the snows 
that cover the highest peaks only from the middle of 
October to the middle of April, a period during which 
few navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries visited our shores, or, indeed, ventured to 
put to sea at all." He adduces quotations directly 
denying the theory he is opposing, from two eight- 
eenth-century writers, one of whom, William Doug- 
lass, says ^ positively: "They ['the White Hills, or 
rather mountains '] are called White, not from their 
being continually covered with snow, but because 
they are bald a-top, producing no trees or brush, and 
covered with a whitish stone or shingle"; while the 
other, the celebrated ranger. Major Robert Rogers, 
states ^ that the Mountains are "so called from their 



gins, "Mention is made before of the white hills, discovered by one 
Darby Field." 

^ The passage is quoted on page 23. 

2 In his A Summary . . . of the First Planting, . . . and Present 
State of the British Settlements in North America (1748-53). 

^ In his A Concise Account of America (1765). Rogers says further: 
" I cannot learn that any person was ever on the top of these moun- 
tains. I have been told by the Indians that they have often attempted 
it in vain, by reason of the change of air they met with, which I am 
inclined to believe, having ascended them myself till the alteration 

xxvi 



INTRODUCTION 

appearance, which is much like snow, consisting, as 
is generally supposed, of a white flint, from which 
the reflection of the sun is very brilliant and daz- 
zling." 

In support of the other view may be cited the 
statement of Josselyn ^ as to the presence of snow 
on the Mountains, which he evidently regards as 
the reason for their name, and the following remark 
of Belknap in this connection: "During this period, 
of nine or ten months [end of October or beginning 
of November to July] the mountains exhibit more or 
less of that bright appearance from which they are 
denominated white ... it may with certainty be con- 
cluded, that the whiteness of them is wholly caused 
by snow, and not by any other white substance, for 
in fact, there is none." ^ 

The most extended discussion of the subject of 
the whiteness of these mountains and its cause that 
I have come across in my reading is in volume III 
of the English writer Edward Augustus Kendall's 
Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States 
in the Years iSoy and 1808, a work published in 1809. 
Of the twenty pages devoted to an account of his 
tour through the White Mountains, eight are en- 
tirely given up to this topic, of which he also speaks 
briefly in another, and earlier, chapter. 

After quoting Belknap's conclusion, just given, 

of air was very perceptible, and even then I had not advanced half- 
way up; the valleys below were then concealed from me by clouds." 

^ See page 23. 

2 Belknap says in another place: "Some writers, who have at- 
tempted to give an account of these mountains, have ascribed the 
whiteness of them to shining rocks, or a kind of white moss." 

xxvii 



INTRODUCTION 

and expressing the opinion that the historian relied 
"on the statements of persons very incompetent to 
make such as are to the purpose," he goes on to say 
that, while he saw the Mountains only when they 
were covered with snow, he was assured that they 
appear white at all seasons of the year, and he says 
further, that he had himself observed a similar 
phenomenon elsewhere. As authority for this fact 
of the perennial white appearance of the New 
Hampshire hills, he cites the result of the obser- 
vations of "the younger Rosebrook, in Briton's 
Woods," who was frequently employed as a guide 
and invariably, when performing this service, ques- 
tioned as to this matter by those whom he was con- 
ducting. Rosebrook's statement was that, when the 
snow is melted, the summits still appear white when 
seen from a considerable distance, but not when 
viewed from nearer points, and that he was puzzled 
to account for this, the explanation that it is due to 
moss not being satisfactory to him. That this condi- 
tion must be true of the White Mountains and that 
it is not peculiar to them was shown, it seemed to the 
traveler, by the remark made to him by a Vermont 
farmer with respect to the mountains west of Lake 
Champlain as seen from his side of the lake: "Some 
of their tops were white all the year round, even when 
the snow was gone." Mr. Kendall was finally, when 
visiting the St. Lawrence country, enabled to settle 
the question to his own satisfaction, as by his own 
observations he made sure of the fact and dis- 
covered the explanation of it. He had opportunity, 
while traveling there, to pass over some of the sum- 

xxviii 



INTRODUCTION 

mits west of the river, which he observed to exhibit 
the same phenomenon and which he found to be 
composed of the same kind of rock as the White 
Mountains. His investigations in the Laurentians 
led him to the conclusion that the white appearance 
of these and other high mountains like them is due 
to the reflection of the sunlight from the rock when 
the atmosphere is rare and the distance is sufficiently 
great to permit of only the high bare portions being 
seen. In producing this effect, he affirms, the color of 
the rock is of minor importance, the chief requisite 
being that the rock should be bare and of a density 
of composition adapted for reflecting the rays of 
light. So much for the question as to why the White 
Mountains are "white" and have their name. 

When we come to the perhaps more important, 
and doubtless more interesting, subject of Indian 
names of the Mountains, we are again on uncertain 
ground. Several of such designations of the principal 
range have come to us, vouched for by various 
authorities. Belknap speaks of the name "Agioco- 
chook," which occurs in a reduced form as "Agio- 
chook," as having been applied to what is now 
known as the "Presidential Range." This name 
Mr. Drake found in print as early as 1736 in the 
narrative ^ of John Gyles's captivity published in 
Boston in that year. It is also recorded by School- 
craft, who says it is plural in form. 

As to its meaning, which the Reverend Edward 

* "These White Hills, at the head of the Penobscot River, are by 
the Indians said to be much higher than those called Agiockochoolc, 
above Saco," says Captain Gyles. 

xxix 



INTRODUCTION 

Ballard thought to be "The Place of the Great 
Spirit of the Forest," Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's 
opinion is that the word Captain Gyles imperfectly 
represented in English syllables is Algonquin for "at 
the mountains on that side" or "over yonder." As 
to the fanciful interpretations, such as that given 
above, or that of another writer, "The Place of the 
Storm Spirit," Dr. Trumbull affirms that there is no 
element of any Algonquin word meaning "great," 
"spirit," "forest," "storm," or "abode," or any 
combination of the meaning of any two of these 
words, in "Agiocochook." The shortened form of 
this name, which occurs in the early ballad on the 
death of Captain Lovewell, has been adopted by 
Whittier, Edna Dean Proctor, and other authors as 
a poetical name for Mount Washington. 

Another Indian name was communicated to the 
Corresponding Secretary of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society by the Reverend Timothy Alden, 
afterwards founder and president of Allegheny Col- 
lege, in a letter dated 1806, which was published 
in the Collections of the Society in 1814. "I have 
lately been informed," he says, " that the White Hills 
were called by one of the eastern tribes, I cannot 
ascertain which, Waumbekketmethna. I have spelt it, 
as I think all aboriginal names ought to be, as pro- 
nounced. Waumbekket signifies white, and methna, 
mountains, as I am told." This name is the only 
Indian name for the White Hills that, according to 
Drake, bears internal evidence of genuineness. That 
writer says that it "easily resolves itself into the 
Kennebec- Abnaki waubeghiket-amadinar, ' white 

XXX 



INTRODUCTION 

greatest mountain.' " " It is very probable, however," 
he says further, "that this synthesis is a mere trans- 
lation, by an Indian, of the English 'White Moun- 
tains.' I have never, myself, succeeded in obtaining 
this name from the modern Abnakis." Schoolcraft, 
commenting on "Waumbek," says that it is "a 
word, which in some of the existing dialects of the 
Algonquin, is pronounced Waubik, that is. White 
Rock." In the form " Waumbek Methna," or some- 
times still further shortened to "Waumbek," this 
name, which has been given the fanciful interpreta- 
tion of ''Mountains with Snowy Foreheads," or the 
like, has also been much used by the poets. Would 
that it might have been the geographical name also ! 

Still another alleged Indian appellation of the 
Mountains, which is mentioned by a number of 
writers, may be set down here for the sake of having 
the record complete. This is the harsh-sounding 
combination of words, "Kan Ran Vugarty," said to 
mean "The Continued Likeness of a Gull," and 
having, obviously, in common with the others, 
reference to the white appearance of the summits. 

Among these hills rise four great New England 
rivers, the Connecticut, the Merrimac, the Andros- 
coggin, and the Saco. As the source, then, of these 
very important elements in the existence and de- 
velopment of New England's industry and com- 
merce, the White Mountains have a more than local 
significance, all of the States of this section, saving 
Rhode Island, being thus directly affected by them. 
As a summer playground and region of scenic beauty, 
they have acquired a reputation more than nation- 

xxxi 



INTRODUCTION 

wide. The district, indeed, was the first to receive 
that rather often appHed sobriquet of American 
Mountain regions, ''The Switzerland of America," 
PhiHp Carrigain, once secretary of state of New 
Hampshire, in his state map ^ of 1816, bestowing 
that, in this instance perhaps somewhat far-fetched, 
appellative upon the hills of his native State. 

This northern upland, which it is my purpose to 
treat on the historical side only, has not, it must be 
admitted at the outset, been the theater of great 
events. No wars or battles have been fought there; 
no great political movements have been initiated or 
carried on there ; indeed, the region is not a political 
entity and "White Mountains" is only a geographi- 
cal expression. It has not even been to any great 
extent the scene of thrilling adventures with the 
Indians. Little, in fact, of a nature to make the 
region interesting historically, in the usual connota- 
tion of that term, has occurred during the nearly 
three centuries it has been known to us. And so the 
materials of the historian of the White Mountains 
are meager, especially as compared with the data 
available to the historian of a region that has an 
eventful history, such as, for instance, the Lake 
George and Lake Champlain locality, and this 
dearth is not altogether encouraging to one who 
would fain have an interesting story to tell. 

^ The text on the side of the map contained these words: "With 
regard to the face of the country, its features are striking and pic- 
turesque. The natural scenery of mountains of greater elevation than 
any others [!] in the United States; of lakes, of cataracts, of vallies 
[sic] furnishes a profusion of the sublime and beautiful. It may be 
called the Switzerland of America." 

* xxxii 



INTRODUCTION 

It must be, therefore, of peaceful and compara- 
tively uneventful pioneer life in a district remote 
from the centers of population, industrial life, and 
civilization, and of the unsung heroisms of hardy 
men in contending with the forces of nature, that 
the first part of the story will largely consist. 

There will be something of interest also, I venture 
to think, in such chronicles as I shall set down of the 
small beginnings of the region as a vacation play- 
ground and of its great growth as such when the 
beautiful scenery and health-giving air had become 
known to a nation in course of time sufficiently in- 
creased in population and possessed of leisure, 
wealth, and facilities to travel and to maintain 
summer resorts. 

Besides these main events of exploration, settle- 
ment, and development as a district for summer 
rest and recreation, there have occurred in the 
region from time to time many minor incidents, as 
to which, as well as to the matters just mentioned, 
I have assumed frequenters of the Mountains and 
even occasional visitors to them may desire to in- 
form themselves. Acting, at any rate, on this as- 
sumption, I have undertaken in the ensuing pages 
the pleasant task of culling out and recording the 
more important occurrences. These events and inci- 
dents, then, form the materials of this chronicle. 



CHRONICLES OF 
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

Little can be told of the character and life of the 
Indians who inhabited or frequented this region 
during the prehistoric ages comprising the period 
before the coming of the white man. Investigators 
have not been able to ascertain much about them, 
and consequently the information that has been ac- 
cumulated as compared with that gathered concern- 
ing the Indians of southern New England, who were, 
after the white man's advent, in close contact with 
the settlements, is comparatively meager and in- 
definite. Even the names and relationships of the 
northern Indians are by no means certain. 

That powerful tribes once lived in and roamed 
over the valleys shadowed by these hills, not only 
does tradition tell us, but also remains bear witness. 
Of their encampments and favorite retreats, how- 
ever, there is lack of adequate knowledge. By the 
time that the settlers had begun to penetrate to this 
region the aborigines had been so reduced by pes- 
tilences and wars that those who were then living 
were probably but a very small fraction of their 
former number. According to what seems to be the 
most reliable information, the tribes inhabiting the 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

foothills and intervales of the White Mountains 
more especially were the Sokokis on the Saco and 
the Arosagunticooks, or Anasagunticooks, on the 
Androscoggin. The former were divided into nu- 
merous branches, of which the Ossipees and Pequaw- 
kets (or Pigwackets) — especially the latter, who 
by some are identified with the Sokokis as a whole 
— were the most prominent. To the south in the 
valley of the Merrimac was the country of the Pen- 
nacooks, under whose sachem were all the clans 
occupying the territory now constituting New 
Hampshire, while to the west at the junction of 
the Connecticut and Ammonoosuc Rivers were the 
Coosucs, a small band, probably a branch of the 
Pennacooks. These tribes all belonged to the Abnaki 
group of the great Algonquian family. They were 
savages of a not very high type of culture, who relied 
for their subsistence mainly on the results of their 
hunting and fishing, their agriculture being confined 
to the cultivation of maize on a limited scale. They 
built conical houses or wigwams and lived in vil- 
lages, which were in some cases inclosed with pali- 
sades. Such remains, therefore, as we find of their 
occupancy of the region are of the most primitive 
kind. On the banks of the rivers and near the ponds 
or lakes traces of their encampments are frequently 
discovered. In some of the intervales corn hills ^ 
used to be seen, and there were also here and there 
evidences of the destruction of trees by girdling. In 

* "The remains of their fields are still visible in many places; 
these are not extensive, and the hills which they made about their 
corn stalks were small." (Belknap.) 

2 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

Conway, pipes and pieces of kettles made of a soft, 
easily cut earthenware have often been found. 

In Ossipee, near the lake, is a large monumental 
mound about fifty feet in diameter and ten feet high, 
from which skeletons buried with the face down- 
ward, tomahawks, and other relics have been taken, 
and tomahawks and pieces of ancient earthenware 
have been found on the surrounding meadow. Here 
also corn hills were once discernible. " In their capi- 
tal fishing places, particularly in great Ossapy & Win- 
ipiseogee rivers," says Belknap, "are the remains of 
their wears, constructed with very large stones." 

Within the limits of the town of Fryeburg, Maine, 
there are many mounds, one of them sixty feet in 
circuit, and various other remains which indicate the 
sites of Indian encampments. Northwest of Frye- 
burg village, in a bend of the Saco and on its east 
bank, was situated Pequawket, a large village of the 
Indians of that name. Hither, after the English 
began to occupy the seacoast, retired the Sokokis, 
originally a large tribe, whose principal village had 
been upon Indian Island near the mouth of the 
Saco. Mounds believed to be of prehistoric origin 
are also extant in Woodstock, West Thornton, and 
other towns in the region. 

Of Indian legend not much has come down to 
us, and most of that belongs to other parts of the 
Mountains than the main ranges. Says Starr 
King: — 

The Indian names and legends are shorn from the 
upper mountain region. They have not been caught for 
our literature. The valleys are almost as bare of them as 

3 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the White Mountain cones are of verdure. What a pity 
it is that our great hills 

Piled to the clouds, — our rivers overhung 

By forests which have known no other change 

For ages, than the budding and the fall 

Of leaves — our valleys lovelier than those 

Which the old poets sang of — should but figure 

On the apocryphal chart of speculation 

As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges, 

Rights and appurtenances, which make up 

A Yankee Paradise — unsung, unknown 

To beautiful tradition; even their names 

Whose melody yet lingers like the last 

Vibration of the red man's requiem, 

Exchanged for syllables significant 

Of cotton mill and rail-car! 

We can scarcely find a settler who can tell any story 
learned in childhood of Indian bravery, suffering, cruelty, 
or love. 

Such a region in Europe would have a world of 
tradition and mythology associated with it — wit- 
ness the wealth of legend possessed by the low hills 
of the Rhine Valley or by the Scottish Border. 

The chief legends worthy of recording, of the few 
that there are, center about the names of the In- 
dian chiefs Passaconaway and Chocorua. Of the 
former, a great New Hampshire chieftain, whose 
name means Child of the Bear and who was long the 
head of the Pennacook Confederation, his leader- 
ship probably antedating the landing of the Pil- 
grims, Indian tradition has it that he was carried 
to Mount Washington in a sleigh drawn by wolves, 
whence he rose toward Heaven in a chariot of fire, 
like Elijah. This legend of his apotheosis suggested 

4 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

to Mr. Sweetser the mysterious story of St. Aspin- 
quid, an Indian sage, who, it has been handed down, 
was converted to Christianity in 1628 and preached 
the Gospel widely for forty years. His death oc- 
curred more than fifty years later and his funeral 
on Mount Agamenticus in York County, Maine, is 
said to have been attended by many sachems and to 
have been marked by a great hunting feast. One 
antiquary believes Passaconaway and St. Aspin- 
quid, because of the correspondences between their 
ages and reputations, to be the same person, and he 
advances the theory that Passaconaway retired to 
Mount Agamenticus during King Philip's War, re- 
ceived the other name from the seashore Indians, 
and died there some years afterward. 

Passaconaway's life story is an interesting one 
and his character was of a remarkably high order. 
He became known to the white men soon after their 
coming, for Captain Levett reported having seen 
him in 1623. His confederation, which is estimated 
to have had at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century several thousand warriors, had, in less than 
twenty years, been almost exterminated by famine, 
pestilence, and pitiless warfare with other Indians. 
In 1629, Passaconaway and his subchiefs granted a 
considerable tract of land between the Piscataqua 
and Merrimac Rivers to the banished Antinomian, 
Rev. John Wheelwright, and others of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay Colony, in return for what the In- 
dians deemed a valuable consideration in "coats, 
shirts, and kettles." Three years later, the sachem 
dispatched to Boston an Indian who had killed an 

5 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

English trader named Jenkins while the latter was 
asleep in a wigwam. When, in 1642, Massachusetts 
sent a force of forty armed men to disarm Passa- 
conaway, he voluntarily delivered up his guns, after 
the General Court had sent an apology to him for 
some unwarranted proceedings on the part of the 
white men, which he, as the authorities to their 
credit admitted, rightfully resented. 

Some two or three years later, Passaconaway and 
his sons put themselves, their people, and their 
lands under the jurisdiction and protection of Mas- 
sachusetts, and from this time he was nominally a 
sort of Puritan magistrate, administering the colonial 
laws upon his subjects. John Eliot, the apostle to 
the Indians, visited the chieftain in 1647, and by his 
preaching so impressed him and his sons that the 
clergyman was entreated to live with them as their 
teacher. Eliot probably converted Passaconaway 
about this time. 

In 1660, the great sachem, overcome with the 
burden of his years and weary of honors, abdicated 
his chieftainship at a solemn assembly of the moun- 
tain and river Indians held at Pawtucket Falls 
(Lowell). His farewell address was heard by two or 
three Englishmen, who reported it to be a fine piece 
of oratory. Various forms ^ of it have come down to 

^ There is one version in Hubbard's Indian Wars, another in 
Bouton's History of Concord, and another in Barstow's History of 
New Hampshire. In view of these, Little, in his History of Warren, 
facetiously remarks, "We come to the probably correct conclusion 
that Passaconaway said something very pretty and exceedingly 
eloquent sometime." One paragraph of the Potter version I have 
omitted. 

6 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

us. A fanciful version, given by Hon. Chandler E. 
Potter in his "History of Manchester," runs as 
follows : — 

Hearken to the words of your father. I am an old oak, 
that has withstood the storm of more than an hundred 
winters. Leaves and branches have been stripped from 
me by the winds and frosts — my eyes are dim — my 
limbs totter — I must soon fall! But when young and 
sturdy, when my bow no young man of the Pennacooks 
could bend it — when my arrows would pierce a deer at 
an hundred yards — and I could bury my hatchet in a 
sapling to the eye — no wigwam had so many furs — 
no pole so many scalp locks, as Passaconaway's. Then 
I delighted in war. The whoop of the Pennacooks was 
heard on the Mohawk — and no voice so loud as Pas- 
saconaway's. The scalps upon the pole of my wigwam 
told the story of Mohawk suffering. ... 

The oak will soon break before the whirlwind — it 
shivers and shakes even now; soon its trunk will be pros- 
trate — the ant and the worm will sport upon it! Then 
think, my children, of what I say; I commune with the 
Great Spirit. He whispers me now — "Tell your peo- 
ple. Peace, Peace, is the only hope of your race. I have 
given fire and thunder to the pale faces for weapons — I 
have made them plentier than the leaves of the forest, 
and still shall they increase! These meadows they shall 
turn with the plow — these forests shall fall by the axe — 
the pale faces shall live upon your hunting grounds, and 
make their villages upon your fishing places ! " The Great 
Spirit says this, and it must be so ! We are few and power- 
less before them ! We must bend before the storm ! The 
wind blows hard! The old oak trembles! Its branches 
are gone! Its sap is frozen! It bends! It falls! Peace, 
Peace, with the white man — is the command of the 
Great Spirit — and the wish — the last wish — of Pas- 
saconaway. 

7 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

After his abdication, the province of Massachu- 
setts granted him a tract of land in Litchfield, where 
he lived for a time. Eliot and General Gookin saw 
him when he was in his one-hundred-and-twentieth 
year. When and how he died are unknown; the 
tradition of his departure from earth has been al- 
ready given. 

Many were the wild and fascinating stories about 
this great chief current among the Indians and the 
colonists. He seems to have been in early life a 
great warrior and later to have become a powwow, 
a sort of priest and necromancer combined. When 
the settlers came to Massachusetts, he used all his 
magic arts against them, but with such lack of suc- 
cess that he became convinced that they were pro- 
tected by the Great Spirit, and so he avoided war- 
fare with them. To the Puritans his actions in this 
instance suggested themselves as a parallel to those 
of a character in their favorite book, and one of the 
fathers gave him accordingly the name of the In- 
dian Balaam. Some of the powers attributed to him 
are thus quaintly described in William Wood's "New 
England's Prospect" (1634): — 

He can make the water burne, the rocks move, the 
trees dance, metamorphise himself into a flaming man. 
Hee will do more; for in winter, when there are no green 
leaves to be got, he will burne an old one to ashes, and 
putting those into the water, produce a new green leaf, 
which you shall not only see, but substantially handle 
and Carrie away; and make of a dead snake's skin a living 
snake, both to be seen, felt, and heard. This I write but 
upon the report of the Indians, who confidently affirm 
stranger things. 

8 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

Passaconaway's son Wonnalancet succeeded him 
as chief. He is said to have been "a sober and grave 
person, of years between fifty and sixty," and to 
have been "always loving and friendly to the Eng- 
lish." He was converted to Christianity by the 
Apostle Eliot and lived a noble life, restraining his 
warriors from attacking the colonists, even during 
King Philip's War. Finding it impossible, at a later 
day, to prevent his people from engaging in open 
hostilities, he gave up the chieftaincy and with a 
few families who adhered to him, sought retreat at 
St. Francis ^ in Canada. He returned to the Merri- 
mac valley in 1696, but after a short time finally 
retired to St. Francis, where he died. 

His successor as chieftain, after his abdication in 
1685, was his nephew, Passaconaway's "grant- 
son," Kancamagus. This resolute warrior made 
several attempts to retain the friendship of the 
colonists, as is evident from his letters to Governor 
Crandall, but was unsuccessful and finally yielded, 
after many slights and much ill-treatment, to the 
solicitations of the warlike and patriotic party in 
the confederation. He organized and led the terri- 
ble attack on Dover in 1689, which was the death- 
throe of the Pennacooks. He was present at the 
signing of the truce of Sagadahoc, but after that 
disappears from history. He may have retired with 
the remainder of his people to St. Francis. Potter 
thus characterizes him : — 

^ The Indian town of St. Frangois de Sales, near Becancour, op- 
posite Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence, which had from the earliest 
times been inhabited by a clan of the Abnakis. 

9 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Kancamagus was a brave and politic chief, and in view 
of what he accomplished at the head of a mere remnant 
of a once powerful tribe, it may be considered a most for- 
tunate circumstance for the English colonists, that he was 
not at the head of the tribe at an earlier period, before it 
had been shorn of its strength, during the old age of Pas- 
saconaway, and the peaceful and inactive reign of Won- 
nalancet. And even could Kancamagus have succeeded 
to the sagamonship ten years earlier than he did, so that 
his acknowledged abilities for counsel and war could 
have been united with those of Philip, history might 
have chronicled another story than the inglorious death 
of the sagamon of Mount Hope in the swamp of Pokano- 
ket. 

After the powerful confederacy of the Pennacooks 
was broken up, the northern tribes remained in their 
ancestral home a few years longer, but were soon 
nearly annihilated by expeditions from the New 
England towns, the remnant finally migrating to 
Canada. 

• Perhaps the most celebrated Indian name asso- 
ciated with White Mountain legend is that of the 
chieftain Chocorua, whose name has been attached 
to the easternmost peak ^ of the Sandwich Range, a 
peak which Sweetser says "is probably the most 
picturesque and beautiful of the mountains of New 
England." Near its summit Chocorua was killed by 
white men. 

One form of the legend concerning this Indian was 
narrated to Mr. Sweetser by an old Inhabitant of 

^ The mountain was known and mapped as Chocorua decades 
before the legend ever appeared in print. On Belknap's map of New 
Hampshire, issued with the second volume of his history, in 1791, 
Chocorua appears, being the only mountain of the Sandwich Range 
to be located or named. 

10 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

Tarn worth, who had written it down many years 
before as he had received it from his ancestors. The 
story runs as follows: — 

When the Pequawket Indians retreated to Canada, 
after Lovewell's battle [1725], Chocorua refused to leave 
the ancient home of his people and the graves of his fore- 
fathers. He remained behind, and was friendly to the in- 
coming white settlers, and especially with one Campbell, 
who lived near what is now Tarn worth. He had a son, 
in whom all his hopes and love were centered. On one 
occasion he was obliged to go to Canada to consult with 
his people at St. Francis, and, wishing to spare his son 
the labors of the long journey, he left him with Campbell 
until his return. The boy was welcomed to the hut of 
the pioneer, and tenderly cared for. One day, however, 
he found a small bottle of poison, which had been pre- 
pared for a mischievous fox, and, with the unsuspecting 
curiosity of the Indian, he drank a portion of it. Cho- 
corua returned only to find his boy dead and buried. The 
improbable story of his fatality failed to satisfy the heart- 
broken chief, and his spirit demanded vengeance. Camp- 
bell went home from the fields one day, and saw the dead 
and mangled bodies of his wife and children on the floor 
of the hut. He tracked Chocorua and found him on the 
crest of the mountain, and shot him down, while the 
dying Indian invoked curses on the white men. 

In another form of the legend, ^ Campbell was an 
active partisan of Cromwell, who, on the restoration 
of the Stuarts, fled to America with his beautiful 
and high-born wife and settled in this remote wilder- 
ness. The son of Chocorua, who was then prophet 

1 This is the form adopted by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child in her story 
of "Chocorua's Curse," printed in the 1830 issue of The Token, an 
annual published at Boston. The story is accompanied by a steel 
engraving, by George W. Hatch, of Thomas Cole's painting of 
"The Death of Chocorua." 

II 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

of the powerful Pequawkets, was a frequent visitor 
at Campbell's house and there met his death by 
accidental poisoning. The murder of the family and 
the death of the chief on the mountain are related 
to have occurred also substantially as narrated in 
the other form of the story. 

Another account, which is probably nearer the 
truth, makes Chocorua an inoffensive Indian, a 
friend of the whites, who was shot by a party of 
hunters, at a time when Massachusetts was, during 
a campaign against the Indians, offering a bounty 
of £ioo for every scalp brought to Boston.^ 

Legend represents the chieftain as raising himself 
upon his hands, when wounded to death by the 
bullet of Campbell, on the precipice of the moun- 
tain which has received his name, to utter an 
anathema upon his enemies, which Mrs. Child has 
put into this form : — 

A curse upon ye, white men! May the Great Spirit 
curse ye when he speaks in the clouds, and his words are 
fire ! Chocorua had a son — and ye killed him while the 
sky looked bright! Lightning blast your crops! Wind 
and fire destroy your dwellings! The Evil Spirit breathe 
death upon your cattle ! Your graves lie in the war path 
of the Indian! Panthers howl, and wolves fatten over 
your bones ! Chocorua goes to the Great Spirit — his 
curse stays with the white man ! 

Although tradition would have it that the curse 
was effectual, as a matter of fact the towns in this 

^ The Chocorua legend has been the subject of a number of poems, 
including a juvenile production of Longfellow's, mentioned elsewhere, 
a spirited lyric of forty lines by Charles J. Fox, and a 280-line poem 
by Mrs. V. G, Ranney. 

12 




a: u 
O m 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

vicinity were never molested by Indians, pestilence, 
or other severe troubles. Even such a calamity as 
the continued dying of cattle in the town of Albany, 
which was attributed to Chocorua's curse, was 
found after many years to be due to a natural 
cause, the presence of muriate of lime in the water 
they drank. 

i A fanciful legend purporting to give the Indians' 
idea of the origin of the White Mountains, or, rather, 
of the formation of the lofty Agiocochook, is thus set 
down in Spaulding and in Willey : — 

Cold storms were in the northern wilderness, and a lone 
red hunter wandered without food, chilled by the frozen 
wind. He lost his strength and could find no game; and 
the dark cloud that covered his life-path made him weary 
of wandering. He fell down upon the snow, and a dream 
carried him to a wide, happy valley, filled with musical 
streams, where singing birds and game were plenty. His 
spirit cried aloud for joy; and the "Great Master of Life" 
waked him from his sleep, gave him a dry coal and a 
flint-pointed spear, telling him that by the shore of the 
lake he might live, and find fish with his spear, and fire 
from his dry coal. One night, when he had laid down his 
coal, and seen a warm fire spring up therefrom, with a 
blinding smoke, a loud voice came out of the flame, and 
a great noise, like thunder, filled the air; and there rose 
up a vast pile of broken rocks. Out of the cloud resting 
upon the top came numerous streams, dancing down, 
foaming cold; and the voice spake to the astonished red 
hunter, saying, ''Here the Great Spirit will dwells and 
watch over his favorite children." 

The Indians who lived In the valleys of this region 
looked with awe upon the Mountains, or at least, 
the upper parts of the ranges. By them the highest 

13 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

summits, cloud-capped often in all seasons or daz- 
zlingly white in winter, were thought to be the 
abodes of superior beings, who were invisible but 
who revealed their presence by the appalling tem- 
pests and by the deafening noises which we now 
know to be due to slides and falling rocks, and the 
ascent of the peaks was, therefore, regarded as not 
only perilous or impossible but sacrilegious. The 
terrible thunder and the blinding lightning seemed 
to them the voice of the Supreme Being and the 
sign of his wrath and omnipotence. 

A deluge tradition similar to that held by so many 
savage tribes was current among them. A quaint 
account of this legend is given in Josselyn's "Ac- 
count of Two Voyages to New England": — 

Ask them whither they go when they dye, they will 
tell you pointing with their finger to Heaven beyond the 
white mountains, and do hint at Noah's Floud, as may be 
conceived by a story they have received from Father to 
Son, time out of mind, that a great while agon their 
Countrey was drowned, and all the People and other 
Creatures in it, only one Powaw and his Webb foreseeing 
the Floud fled to the white mountains carrying a hare 
along with them and so escaped ; after a while the Powaw 
sent the Hare away, who not returning emboldned there- 
by they descended, and lived many years after, and had 
many Children, from whom the Countrie was filled again 
with Indians. 

Another tradition of the early days is connected 
with the Giant's Grave, a mound of river gravel or 
sand on which was situated the first public house in 
the Fabyan region. It was affirmed that an Indian 
maniac once stood here and, waving a burning pitch- 

14 



INDIAN LEGEND AND HISTORY 

pine torch kindled at a tree struck by lightning an 
instant before, cried out this prophecy, "No pale- 
face shall take deep root here; this the Great Spirit 
whispered in my ear." Two inns on this site have 
been burned and considerable damage has been done 
by freshets. These facts very likely have given rise 
to the tradition. 

One of the wildest and most beautiful of the In- 
dian legends connected with the Crystal Hills is 
that of the mystery of the Great Carbuncle, which 
Hawthorne has immortalized in a characteristic 
twice-told tale, bearing this title and introducing 
eight adventurers of various degrees, conditions, 
and descriptions as seekers for the marvelous stone. 

There are several forms of the tradition,^ which 
was acquired from the aborigines by some of the 
early explorers and which was reported by them on 
their return to the settlements, a few even going so 
far as solemnly to afhrm having seen the wondrous 
object. According to a generally received form of 
the legend, somewhere in the glen of the Dry, or 
Mount Washington, River, a tributary of the Saco 
which joins the latter nearly opposite the Franken- 
stein Cliff, was hidden, under a shelving rock, a 
glorious carbuncle. This gem, it was declared, had 
been placed there by the Indians, who killed one of 
their number so that an evil spirit might haunt the 

^ Says the matter-of-fact historian Belknap of this fancy: "From 
them [the Indians], and the captives whom they sometimes led to 
Canada through the passes of these mountains, many fictions have 
been propagated, which have given rise to marvelous and incredible 
stories; particularly, it has been reported, that at immense and in- 
accessible heights, there have been seen carbuncles, which are sup- 
posed to appear luminous in the night." 

15 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

place. The great stone ever and anon startled the 
rangers in their lonely night camps or the farmers in 
the log houses in the Saco lowlands by flashing its 
glittering light far out over the country. Led by the 
reports of the gem's existence and marvelous bril- 
liancy, several parties of adventurers are said to 
have gone in quest of it, hoping in some way to ob- 
tain fabulous riches as the reward of their search. 
One expedition, it is recorded, even took along "a 
good man to lay the evil spirit," but all got nothing 
for their arduous toil but sore bruises and bitter 
disappointment. 

There is a further tradition that one old Indian 
pronounced a curse upon the pale-faced seekers, 
and, as his dying wish, prayed that the Great Spirit 
by a black storm of fire and thunder would rend the 
cliff, roll the carbuncle down to the valley, and bury 
it deeply under the ruins of rocks and trees. So 
firm and persistent became belief in this mysterious 
jewel's existence that, even after the Revolution, as 
we are informed by the author of an early history of 
Maine, it had not been entirely given up by dwellers 
in the region. 



II 

EARLY EXPLORERS 

Plainly visible from tlie sea as the summits of 
the White Mountains are in clear weather, they 
must have been seen by a number of the early ex- 
plorers of northeastern America when cruising along 
the coast. Who was the first European to behold 
them cannot be told, but the Florentine navigator 
Verrazano is the first, it appears, who speaks of 
having seen them. In the year 1524, as he was skirt- 
ing the coast of the future New England, he visited 
the site of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His record 
of the progress of his voyage at this point says, "We 
departed from thence keeping our course Northeast 
along the coast, which we found more pleasant 
champion and without woods, with high mountains 
within the land." ^ 

The Mountains appear, it is probable, vaguely lo- 

^ Letter of Giovanni da Verrazano to the King of France, July 8, 
1524, of which three copies exist. The version given above is from 
the translation made for Hakluyt's Voyages, in 1583, of the copy 
printed by Ramusio in 1556. A second copy was found in the Strozzi 
Library in Florence. A third copy, which has the distinction of being 
contemporaneous, is now in Rome and was first printed in Italy in 
1909. It was translated into English by Dr. Edward Hagaman Hall, 
Secretary of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 
and was published in the Report of that society for 1910. Our passage 
reads thus in Dr. Hall's translation: "Wedeparted, skirting the coast 
between east and north, which we found very beautiful, open and bare 
of forests, with high mountains back inland, growing smaller toward 
the shore of the sea." 

17 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

cated, on a number of early maps. They are doubt- 
less the montanas of Ribero's map of the Polus 
Mundi Arcticus (1529). They are shown as Les 
Montaignes on a map of the world painted on parch- 
ment by the Bishop of Viseu in 1542 under the orders 
of Francis I, and they appear also in Nicolo del 
Dolfinato's map in the "Navigationi del Mondo 
Nuovo," published at Venice in 1560. Probably the 
Monies S. Johannis of Michael Lok's map (1582) 
are the White Mountains. They are drawn on the 
"Mappemonde" of Mercator, published at Duis- 
burg in 1569, as lying west of the great city of 
Norumbega. On Sebastian Cabot's map of the 
world, drawn in 1544, montagnas is found in the lo- 
cation, roughly, of this group. John Foster's map of 
New England, 1677, is the first in which the name 
of "White Hills" appears.^ In Holland's map of 
1784, which embodies the results of a survey made 
at public expense by Captain Samuel Holland in 
1773-74 and which is entitled, "A Topographical 
Map of the State of New Hampshire," the names of 
individual peaks are given for the first time. Philip 
Carrigain, whose name is commemorated by that 
striking mountain of bold and massive form, which 
stands almost exactly in the center of the White 
Mountain region, published a map of New Hamp- 
shire in 181 6. This well-known work was compiled 
by him from town surveys which the legislatures of 
1803 and 1805 had ordered and which had been 

^ This map was printed in the Reverend William Hubbard's Nar- 
rative oj the Troubles with the Indians in New England. In the first 
impression the name was printed "Wine Hills," obviously a misprint, 
but the map was recut the same year with the correct name substituted. 

18 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

returned to the office of the secretary of state, a 
position held by Carrigain in the years just named. 
The first carefully prepared map of the Mountains 
was that published by Professor G. P. Bond of 
Harvard College in 1853. It was made from original 
triangulations. 

To return to the subject of exploration. The 
great French explorer and founder of Canada, 
Samuel de Champlain, evidently descried these 
mountains during his expedition of 1605, for in his 
account of his voyage along the coast of Maine, when 
he must have reached the vicinity of Portland, he 
made this entry in his journal: "From here large 
mountains are seen to the west, in which is the 
dwelling place of a savage captain called Aneda, 
who encamps near the river Quinibequy." ^ 

The Englishman Christopher Levett, the pioneer 
colonist in Casco Bay, in his account of his voyage 
to New England of 1623 and 1624, which was pub- 
lished in 1628, has this reference to the White 
Mountains: "This River [undoubtedly the Saco], as 
I am told by the Salvages, commeth from a great 
mountain called the Christall hill, being as they say 
100 miles in the Country, yet it is to be scene at the 
sea side, and there is no ship arives in New England, 
either to the West so farre as Cape Cod, or to the 
East so farre as Monhiggen, but they see this moun- 
taine the first land, if the weather be cleere." ^ 

1 The Kennebec. 

2 Apparently the vo^^agers of those early days were blessed with 
exceptionally good eyesight. President Dwight states that the sailors 
of his day averred that they could see Mount Washington from a 
point at sea 165 miles from it. 

19 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

It was not until some years after the coast was 
settled that any one could venture so far away from 
the security and supplies of the settlements as these 
remote hills, even for the purpose of exploration. 
But at length adventurous spirits undertook this 
arduous and dangerous exploit. Darby Field, whom 
recent researches recorded by Warren W. Hart in 
Appalachia show to have been probably a native 
of Boston, England, and therefore not of the na- 
tionality attributed to him in Winthrop's "Journal," 
is generally credited with being the first European 
to visit and explore the White Mountains. 

It was in June, 1642,^ that he made the first and 
probably also the second of his expeditions to this 
region, accounts of which are thus set down by 
Winthrop : — 

One Darby Field, an Irishman, living about Pascata- 
quack," being accompanied with two Indians, went to the 
top of the white hill. He made his journey in 18 days. 
His relation — at his return was, that it was about one 
hundred miles from Saco, that after 40 miles travel he did, 
for the most part, ascend, and within 10 miles of the top 
was neither tree nor grass, but low savins, which they 
went upon the top of sometimes, but a continual ascent 
upon rocks, on a ridge between two valleys filled with 
snow, out of which came two branches of the Saco River, 
which meet at the foot of the hill, where was an Indian 
town of some 200 people. Some of them accompanied 

^ "1642, (4) [1. e., fourth month, or June]. The first discovery of 
the great mountaine (called the Christall Hills) to the N. W. by 
Darby Field." Quoted from the Reverend Samuel Danforth's Al- 
manac for 1647, in Belknap and elsewhere. 

^ Pascataquack appears to have been a general name for the region 
along the Piscataqua River. Field was a resident of Exeter at this 
time. 

20 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

him within 8 miles of the top, but durst go no further, 
telling him that no Indian ever dared go higher, and that 
he would die if he went. So they staid there till his return, 
but his two Indians took courage by his example and went 
with him. They went divers times through the thick 
clouds for a good space, and within 4 miles of the top 
they had no clouds, but very cold. By the way, among 
the rocks, there were two ponds, one a blackish water and 
the other reddish. The top of all was plain about 60 feet 
square. On the north side there was such a precipice, as 
they could scarcely discern to the bottom. They had 
neither cloud nor wind on the top, and moderate heat. 
All the country about him seemed a level, except here 
and there a hill rising above the rest, but far beneath 
them. He saw to the north a great water which he judged 
to be 100 miles broad, but could see no land beyond it. 
The sea by Saco seemed as if it had been within 20 miles. 
He saw also a sea to the eastward, which he judged to be 
the Gulf of Canada: He saw some great waters in parts 
to the westward which he judged to be the great lake 
which Canada River comes out of. He found there much 
Muscovy glass, they could rive out pieces of 40 feet long 
and 7 or 8 broad. When he came back to the Indians, he 
found them drying themselves by the fire, for they had 
had a great tempest of wind and rain. About a month 
after he went again, with five or six of his company, then 
they had some wind on the top, and some clouds above 
them which hid the sun. They brought some stones 
which they supposed had been diamonds, but they were 
most crystal. 

Field was then, evidently, the first person to 
ascend Mount Washington, for the Indians of the 
region, if we may believe Field's statement given 
in the passage just quoted from Winthrop, and 
there is no reason to doubt its truth, had never 
dared to undertake the ascent to this supposed 

21 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

abode of the Great Spirit. He is thought to have 
gone up the ridge (Boott Spur) between Tucker- 
man's Ravine and the valley of the Dry, or Mount 
Washington, River. 

The glowing account Field gave on his return 
of the riches he had found fired other daring men 
to undertake the exploration of the Mountains. 
Thomas Gorges, Deputy-Governor, and Richard 
Vines, Esq., Councillor, of the Province of Maine, 
started out later in the same year. Winthrop gives 
the following account of their journey and its 
results: — 

The report he [Darby Field] brought of shining stones, 
etc., caused divers others to travel thither, but they 
found nothing worth their pains. Among others, Mr. 
Gorge [sic] and Mr. Vines, two of the magistrates of Sir 
Ferdinand Gorge his province, went thither about the 
end of this month [October]. They went up Saco river 
in birch canoes, and that way, they found it 90 miles to 
Pegwagget, an Indian town, but by land it is but 60. 
Upon Saco river they found many thousand acres of rich 
meadow, but there are ten falls, which hinder boats, etc. 
From the Indian town they went up hill (for the most 
part), about 30 miles in woody lands, then they went 
about 7 or 8 miles upon shattered rocks, without tree or 
grass, very steep all the way. At the top is a plain about 
three or four miles over, all shattered stones, and upon 
that is another rock or spire, about a mile in height, and 
about an acre of ground at the top. At the top of the 
plain arise four great rivers, each of them so much water, 
at the first issue, as would drive a mill; Connecticut river 
from two heads at the N. W., and S. W. which join in one 
about 60 miles off, Saco river on the S. E., Amascoggen 
which runs into Casco Bay at the N. E., and Kennebeck, 
at the N. by E. The mountain runs E. and W. 30 or 

22 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

40 miles, but the peak is above all the rest. They went 
and returned in 15 days. 

John Josselyn, traveler and writer, appears to 
have explored the White Hills during his second 
visit to New England, between 1663 and 1671. He 
gives a quaint and curious description of them in 
his " New England's Rarities Discovered " (1672) : — 

Four score miles (upon a direct line), to the Northwest 
of Scarborow, a ridge of Mountains run Northwest and 
Northeast an hundred Leagues, known by the name of 
the White Mountains, upon which lieth Snow all the year, 
and is a Landmark twenty miles off at Sea. It is a rising 
ground from the Sea shore to these Hills, and they are 
inaccessible, but by the Gullies which the dissolved Snow 
hath made; in these Gullies grow Saven Bushes, which 
being taken hold of are a good help to the climbing Dis- 
coverer; upon the top of the highest of these Mountains 
is a large Level or Plain of a day's journey over, whereon 
nothing grows but Moss; at the farther end of this Plain 
is another Hill called the Sugar Loaf, to outward appear- 
ance a rude heap of massie stones piled one upon another, 
and you may as you ascend step from one stone to 
another, as if you were going up a pair of stairs, but 
winding still about the Hill till you come to the top, 
which will require half a days time, and yet it is not above 
a Mile, where there is also a Level of about an Acre of 
ground, with a pond of clear water in the midst of it; 
which you may hear run down, but how it ascends is a 
mystery. From this rocky Hill you may see the whole 
Country round about; it is far above the lower Clouds, 
and from hence we beheld a Vapour (like a great Pillar), 
drawn up by the Sun Beams out of a great Lake or Pond 
into the Air, where it was formed into a Cloud. The 
Country beyond these Hills Northward is daunting terri- 
ble, being full of rocky Hills, as thick as Mole-hills in a 
Meadow, and cloathed with infinite thick Woods. 

23 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

In his "An Account of Two Voyages to New 
England" (1674), Josselyn gives further descrip- 
tion of the country "as Rockie and Mountanious, 
full of tall wood." "One stately mountain there is 
surmounting the rest, about four score mile from the 
Sea," he says, and continues, "Between the moun- 
tains are many ample rich and pregnant valleys as 
ever eye beheld, beset on each side with variety of 
goodly Trees, the grass man-high unmowed, uneaten, 
and uselessly withering"; and "within these val- 
leys are spacious lakes or ponds well stored with 
Fish and Beavers; the original of all the great 
Rivers in the Countrie." He corrects his previous 
statement as to the snow's lying upon the moun- 
tains the entire year by excepting the month of 
August; speaks of the black flies as "so numerous 
, . . that a man cannot draw his breath, but he will 
suck of them in"; remarks that "some suppose the 
white mountains were first raised by earthquakes"; 
and adds, "they are hollow, as may be guessed by 
the resounding of the rain upon the level on the 
top." 

Belknap records an ascent of Mount Washington 
made by "a ranging company," April 29, 1725, 
which found the snow four feet deep on the north- 
west side, the summit almost bare of snow though 
covered with white frost and ice, and the alpine 
pond frozen. A similar party, he relates, was "in 
the neighborhood of the White Mountains, on a 
warm day, in the month of March," in 1746, and 
was "alarmed with a repeated noise, which they 
supposed to be the firing of guns. On further 

24 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

search," he continues, "they found it to be caused 
by rocks, falling from the south side of a steep 
mountain." The same authority tells also of an 
ascent to the summit made on the 6th of June, 1774, 
by Captain Evans and some other men who were 
making a road through the eastern pass of the moun- 
tains, and who found "on the south side, in one of 
the deep gullies, a body of snow thirteen feet deep, 
and so hard as to bear them." On the 19th of the 
same month, some of the same party ascended 
again, and in the same spot the snow, they found, 
was five feet deep. In the first week of September, 
1783, two men who attempted to ascend the Moun- 
tain, found the bald top so covered with snow and 
ice that they could not reach the summit. "But 
this," says the historian, "does not happen every 
year so soon; for the mountain has been ascended 
as late as the first week in October, when no snow 
was upon it." 

The pass now called Crawford Notch was known 
to the Indians, but was probably little used by them, 
because of their superstitious fear of the Mountains. 
It is maintained by some, however, that certain war 
parties of Canadian Indians used this passage in 
making raids upon the New England coast. Belknap 
says that the Indians formerly led their captives 
through it to Canada, and we are told that in the 
spring of 1746 a raiding party attacked Gorham, 
Maine, and carried off several prisoners, one of 
whom described the march to Canada as being 
through the Notch. 

It was in 1771 that the pass was first made known 

25 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

to the New England colonists. Timothy Nash, a 
hunter, when in pursuit of a moose which had 
eluded him, climbed a tree on Cherry Mountain and, 
as he was looking about in the hope of espying his 
game, he saw to his surprise a deep depression in 
the mountain wall. As soon as possible he made his 
way thither and explored the defile, following the 
Saco down through. On his arrival at Portsmouth, 
he informed Governor Wentworth of his discovery, 
a most important one, as such a gap in the Moun- 
tains would save much in journeying between the 
seacoast and the upper Connecticut valley. The 
governor, wishing to test the value of the pass as a 
trade route, offered Nash a grant of the tract of 
land (known to-day as "Nash and Sawyer's Loca- 
tion") extending from the Notch to a point beyond 
the present Fabyan House, if he would bring a horse 
through from Lancaster. Enlisting the aid of a 
fellow hunter by the name of Benjamin Sawyer, 
Nash succeeded in performing the required task and 
in thus gaining the promised reward for himself and 
his partner.^ The two worthies soon squandered, 
however, the proceeds of their grant. A road ^ was 

^ The story of the discovery as given in the Crawford History varies 
somewhat from the account I have followed, which is based on an- 
other and later source. According to the former record, the two 
hunters went out together for the express purpose of discovering such 
a means of communication and the tree-climbing was done after the 
discovery to obtain a better view and thus make sure of the fact. 
The condition upon which the grant was made by Governor Went- 
worth in 1773, according to this authority, was that they should 
make a good road through their tract and procure the settlement of 
five families on it within five years. 

2 This "never well-finished county road" was paid for out of the 
proceeds of a confiscated Tory estate. It is said to have been a singu- 

26 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

shortly after built and thus a direct route between 
the seacoast and upper Coos was established. The 
first merchandise carried down from Lancaster was 
a barrel of tobacco and the first commodity trans- 
ported in the opposite direction a barrel of whiskey, 
most of the contents of which are said to have been 
consumed on the way. On December 28, 1803, a 
turnpike, the tenth in New Hampshire, was incor- 
porated and shortly afterwards ^ was constructed 
through the Notch at an expense of $40,000 for 
twenty miles, the money being raised by lottery. It 
occupied to some extent the site of the old road, was 
more skillfully built than its predecessor, and soon 
became one of the best-paying turnpikes in the 
northern part of the State. 

In July, 1784, a journey to the Mountains was 
accomplished, which is noteworthy for the number 
and character of the members of the party who 
made it and because of the purpose for which it was 
undertaken. I refer to the expedition made by the 
Reverend Dr. Jeremy Belknap, the historian of New 
Hampshire, then a resident of Dover; the Rev- 
erend Daniel Little, of Wells, Maine; the Reverend 

lar specimen of highway engineering, being laid out, in the main, 
fifty or sixty feet higher than the later turnpike, being so steep in 
places that it was necessary to draw horses and wagons up with 
ropes, and crossing the Saco, we are told, no less than thirty-two 
times in ascending the valley. Theodore Dwight, Jr., says the road 
was built in 1785. It was in part at least constructed in 1774, as the 
statement of Belknap given on page 25 bears witness. 

1 Dr. Shattuk, of Boston, in his account, published in the Phila- 
delphia Medical and Physical Journal (1808), of his excursion to the 
White Hills in the preceding year, says, in speaking of the Notch, 
"A turnpike-road is now [August, 1807] building from Bath, through 
the Notch, to Portland." 

27 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich, Massachusetts; Dr. 
Joshua Fisher, of Beverly, Massachusetts; Mr. 
Heard, of Ipswich, and two young collegians, 
Hubbard and Bartlett, who set out to make a tour 
of the White Mountains "with a view to make 
particular observations on the several phenomena 
that might occur." For this purpose they were 
equipped with various instruments, including ba- 
rometers, thermometers, a sextant, and surveying 
compasses. They were thus the first of a consider- 
able line of scientific inquirers to visit these hills. 

The historian has left several records ^ of the trip. 
Let me briefly advert to these, noting their character 
and provenience. In the first place, much of the 
Reverend Doctor's correspondence with his friend 
Ebenezer Hazard, of Philadelphia, has been pre- 
served and printed in the "Collections" of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. 

Among these letters we find a record of Belknap's 
intention to make such a journey, for under date of 
July 4, 1784, he writes: " I expect, next week, to set 
out on a land tour to the White Mts., in company 
with several gentlemen of a scientific turn. I may 
write you again once before I go; but, if I live to 
come back, you may depend on such a description 
as I may be able to give." Dr. Belknap's letters to 
Mr. Hazard, giving an account of his tour are, un- 

^ Dr. Cutler also left an account of the journey, which is graphic 
and well written and which may be found in his Life, Journals, and 
Correspondence, published in 1888. Belknap was indebted to Cutler 
for his information about the ascent and descent of the chief peak. 
Cutler's manuscript breaks off before the description of the return 
is finished, but the remainder is covered in an account of the tour 
written by Mr. Little. 

28 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

fortunately, not preserved among the Hazard letters. 
The want of such a narrative, however, is fully sup- 
plied, as has been intimated. There is extant, first, 
a memoir, "Description of the White Mountains," 
which was sent by him to the American Philosophi- 
cal Society of Philadelphia, and to which "great 
attention was paid," writes Hazard. This was pub- 
lished in 1786, in the second volume of the Society's 
"Transactions," and in substance is similar to the 
account afterwards published in the third volume 
of Dr. Belknap's "History of New Hampshire." 
Both of these records are very different in form from 
the third account, which consists of the original 
notes kept by the doctor in the form of a diary. 
These have been printed with the correspondence 
above mentioned, and on them I shall largely rely 
for my summary of this notable trip. In the chapter 
on the White Mountains, given in the "History," the 
author refers to the visit to the Mountains made by 
a party of gentlemen in 1784, but gives no intima- 
tion that he was one of the company. A few addi- 
tional particulars are, however, there given. 

The historian's account of the trip recorded in his 
diary is so naive and detailed that one may be par- 
doned for thinking that it may be of sufficient inter- 
est to give rather fully. 

At Conway the travelers found Colonel Joseph 
Whipple, of Dartmouth (later Jefferson), and Cap- 
tain Evans, who was to be their pilot, ready to go 
with them. Thence they journeyed through what 
is now Jackson and "along the Shelbume Road" to 
apparently about three fourths of a mile beyond the 

29 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Glen Ellis Falls, where they encamped for the night. 
The next day, Saturday, July 24, the party under- 
took the ascent of "the Mountain" from the eastern 
side. Dr. Fisher soon gave out, owing to a pain in 
his side, and returned to the camp, where Colonel 
Whipple's negro man had been left in charge of the 
horses and baggage. After about two hours more of 
climbing, "having risen many very steep and ex- 
tremely difficult precipices, I found my breath fail," 
says Dr. Belknap,^ and in a consultation of the 
party it was decided that inasmuch as many stops 
had had to be made on his account and as the pilot 
supposed they were not more than halfway up to 
"the Plain," he should return. Refusing to deprive 
those who offered to go back with him of their ex- 
pected pleasure, the good doctor came down safely 
alone in about an hour and a half and arrived "much 
fatigued," at the camp, "about 10 o'clock." It 
came on to rain toward night, so those at the camp 
repaired their tent with bark, took all the baggage 
into it, and anxiously awaited the return of their 
friends. The rain increased and continued all night, 
but although the tent leaked and the fire "decayed," 
they managed to keep the fire going and themselves 
dry. 

It ceased raining at daylight on Sunday and soon 
thereafter the report of a gun partly relieved the 
anxiety of Drs. Belknap and Fisher. Shortly after 
the party of climbers arrived safely at the camp. 

^ "The spirit was willing but the flesh (i. e., the lungs) weak," he 
says in a letter to Hazard, and in the same letter, "You will not 
wonder that such a quantity of matter (' i8o or 190 lbs. of mortality') 
could not ascend the White Mountains farther than it did." 

30 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

They reported that they passed the night around a 
fire, which was their only defense against the rain, 
and that "they had ascended to the summit, but 
had not had so good a view as they wished, the 
Mountain being most of the time involved with 
clouds, which rolled up and down, in every direction, 
above, below, and around them." Their scientific 
observations were by "this unfortunate circum- 
stance" for the most part prevented. They arrived 
at the pinnacle of the Sugar-Loaf at 1 .06, their actual 
time of climbing from the tent being five hours and 
thirteen minutes. On the highest rock they found an 
old hat, which had been left there in June, 1774, by 
Captain Evans's party. They dined at 2 o'clock, we 
are told, on partridges and neat's tongue, cut the 
letters "N.H." on the uppermost rock and under a 
stone left a plate of lead ^ on which were engraved 
their names. The descent was a particularly diffi- 
cult one, as, owing to the clouds, even the guide 
could not find the way down. Soon after their return 
to the camp they left for Dartmouth. 

Their course in ascending the mountain was evi- 
dently through Tuckerman's Ravine, probably over 
Boott Spur, and up the east side of the cone, their 
route in the lower part being indicated by the stream 
which bears Dr. Cutler's name.^ Dr. Cutler esti- 

1 The finding of this plate eighteen years later was "the source of 
great mystification to the villagers at Jackson." (Sweetser.) 

2 Given to the river, it is said, by Dr. Cutler's express desire. 
According to Belknap, another tributary of the Ellis River "falls 
from the same mountain," a short distance to the south, and is called 
New River. Belknap's map makes Cutler's River flow from the 
present Tuckerman's Ravine. The account of Dr. Bigelow, a later 
explorer, agrees with this. In later maps, however, the names of the 

31 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

mated 'the height of the "pinnacle" or "sugar- 
loaf," as Belknap calls it, to be not less than three 
hundred feet. From some unsatisfactory observa- 
tions with the barometer, the elevation of the princi- 
pal summit above the sea was computed to be nearly 
ten thousand feet. The party were disappointed in 
their attempt to measure the altitude geometrically 
from the base, because "in the meadow they could 
not obtain a base of sufficient length, nor see the 
summit of the sugar-loaf; and in another place, 
where these inconveniences were removed, they 
were prevented by the almost continual obscuration 
of the mountains by clouds." 

"It is likely," says Professor Tuckerman, "that 
the plants of the higher regions were observed,^ and 
Mr. Oakes possessed fragments of such a collection 
made, either now or later, by Dr. Cutler, but the 
latter did not notice them in his memoir on the 
plants of New England published the next year in 
the transaction of the Academy, ^ nor is there any 
mention of them in the six small volumes of his 
botanical manuscripts which have come to my 
knowledge." 

As the name of Mount Washington is found in 
Dr. Cutler's manuscript of 1784, it is probable that 

streams were transposed, the error being noticed by Mr. Sweetser, 
who was confirmed in his decision in the matter by Professor Tucker- 
man. New River got its name from the fact of its recent origin, it 
having been formed in October, 1775, during a great flood. 
|j^- 1 Some general observations on the vegetation of the Mountains, 
set down by Dr. Cutler in a manuscript preserved by Belknap, are 
quoted in Belknap's History and Dwight's Travels. 

2 The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which Dr. 
Cutler was a member. 

32 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

the appellation was given to the mountain by the 
party whose journey has just been described. The 
name first appears in print in Belknap's ''History of 
New Hampshire," in the third volume, which was 
published in 1792.^ 

Dr. Cutler again visited the Mountains in July, 
1804, this time chiefly to collect botanical specimens, 
in company with several friends, among whom were 
Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch and Dr. W. D. Peck, after- 
ward professor of natural history at Cambridge. 
The party encamped on the side of Mount Wash- 
ington on the night of the 27th, and on the next day 
Cutler, Peck, and one or two others made the ascent, 
arriving at 12.30. There were no clouds about the 
mountain, but the climbers were much chilled, and 
the descent was extremely fatiguing. Barometrical 
observations made at this time were computed by 
Dr. Bowditch to give an elevation of 7055 feet for 
the highest summit. 

Dr. Peck made during the trip a collection of 
alpine plants, the citations of which in Pursh's 
"Flora of North America," published in 18 14, "en- 
able us," says Professor Tuckerman, "to determine 
the earliest recognition of several of the most in- 
teresting species." 

Of early travelers to the Mountains one of the 
most distinguished was the Reverend Dr. Timothy 
Dwight, president of Yale College from 1794 to 
181 7. Dr. Dwight made two journeys on horseback 
to this region, the first in 1797 and the second in 

1 "It has lately been distinguished by the name of Mount Wash- 
ington,'' is Belknap's statement. 

33 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

1803.^ His companion on the first expedition 
("Journey to the White Mountains") was a Mr. L., 
one of the tutors of Yale College, and their objects 
were to examine the Connecticut River and to visit 
the White Mountains. Their first objective point 
was Lancaster, whence they proposed to proceed 
through the Notch to their second, Portland. They 
reached Lancaster on the morning of September 30. 
They left there on October 2, stayed overnight at 
Rosebrook's, and on October 3 passed through the 
Notch, of which Dr. D wight gives a vivid descrip- 
tion. It is "a very narrow defile," he says, "extend- 
ing two miles in length between two huge cliffs, 
apparently rent asunder by some vast convulsion of 
nature. This convulsion," he continues, "was, in 
my own view, unquestionably that of the deluge." 
He gives interesting information about the size 
and character of the mountain towns, describes 
Mount Washington and other features of the land- 
scape graphically, and, altogether, has provided a 
very readable narrative of his tour. In his visit to 
the Mountains in 1803, President Dwight had as 
companion two graduates and a senior of Yale 
College, and their object was to ride up the Con- 
necticut River as far as the Canadian boundary 
("Journey to the Canada Line"). In the course of 
the tour, however, the party left the Connecticut, 
went up the Lower Ammonoosuc, turned aside from 

^ Dr. Dwight also made two horseback journeys to Lake Winne- 
pesaukee. The first of these was made in the autumn of 1812 and the 
second in the same season of the next year. In both excursions he 
touched the fringe of the White Mountain region, passing through 
Plymouth in both and ascending Red Hill on the second. 

34 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

the latter to visit Bethlehem, whence they returned 
to the Ammonoosuc, and then went on to the Notch, 
which they visited on September 30. "I renewed," 
says the traveler, "a prospect of all the delightful 
scenes, which I have mentioned in a former account." 
It was at this time that he gave to one of the water- 
falls near the Gate of the Notch the name "Silver 
Cascade," which it still bears. He revisited Rose- 
brook's, and then went by way of Jefferson to 
Lancaster and thence onward to Canada. 

Another early scientific explorer of the White 
Hills, who has left us an account of his excursion 
and a record of his observations, and who deserves 
a brief mention, was Dr. George Shattuk, of 
Boston. He was one of a party of six, which set out 
from Hanover, July 8, 1807, taking along various 
scientific instruments. On Saturday the nth the 
members of the party started from Rosebrook's to 
ascend Mount Washington, at the summit of which 
they arrived the following day. Dr. Shattuk notes 
that the temperature there at noon was 66° and that 
the day was not very clear, the distant horizon be- 
ing smoky. He describes briefly the plants, the 
character of the surface of the summit, the rareness 
of the atmosphere, and other phenomena. Unfor- 
tunately, his attempts to make barometrical obser- 
vations for the purpose of estimating the height of 
the mountain were, he says, "defeated by an acci- 
dent, the prevention of which was beyond my con- 
troul." 

The next noteworthy American explorer of the 
White Hills was Dr. Jacob Bigelow. Botany was the 

35 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

particular interest of this famous Boston physician, 
who was born in 1797 and who lived to the ripe old 
age of ninety- two. His tour to the Mountains was 
made in 18 16, in company with Francis C. Gray, 
Esq., Dr. Francis Boott, in whose honor a spur of 
Mount Washington has been named, Nathaniel 
Tucker, and Lemuel Shaw, Esq., afterward Chief 
Justice of Massachusetts. On their way they 
climbed Monadnock and Ascutney. The ascent of 
the White Mountains "was at that time," says the 
doctor,^ "an arduous undertaking, owing to the 
rough state of the country and the want of roads or 
paths." "We were obliged," he says further, "to 
walk about fifteen miles and to encamp two nights 
in the brushwood on the side of the mountain." 
Each man of the party having carried up a stick, 
they were enabled to build a fire on the summit and 
to prepare a meal from such supplies as their guides 
had brought up. The day (July 2) was a fine one, 
but the atmosphere was hazy, so that their view of 
distant objects was very indistinct. The tempera- 
ture at noon was 57° F. From the registration of a 
mountain barometer at that hour, calculations were 
made which gave the height within a few feet of the 
correct altitude. As a memorial of their achievement 

1 Dr. Bigelow published an account of the journey and a list of the 
plants collected in the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, 
for October, 1816. The quotations in the text are taken from some 
autobiographical notes, quoted in a Memoir of Jacob Bigelow, M.D., 
LL.D., by George E. Ellis (1880). Writing these notes about fifty 
years after the event, Dr. Bigelow's memory must have played him 
false, for he gives the year of the journey as 18 15 and states that it 
was the 4th of July when the party was on the summit and that in 
celebration of the day Mr. Gray was invited to deliver an impromptu 
address. 

36 



EARLY EXPLORERS 

of the ascent they left their names and the date 
inclosed in a bottle cemented to the highest rock. 
In the afternoon they descended in about five hours 
to their camping place, and the following day they 
reached Conway. 

This expedition, besides achieving the most satis- 
factory determination of the height of Mount 
Washington that had been made, was noteworthy 
as a natural history survey. Dr. Bigelow's article 
"Some Account of the White Mountains of New 
Hampshire," provided a statement of all that was 
known of their mineralogy and zoology, but is 
especially important from a botanical standpoint, 
for his list of plants, or florula, "determined," says 
Professor Tuckerman, "in great measure the phse- 
nogamous botany of our Alps." Very appropriately 
Dr. Bigelow's name has been since given to a grassy 
plot (Bigelow's Lawn), rich in alpine plants, below 
the cone of Washington on Boott Spur. Dr. Boott 
returned to the Mountains in August of the same 
year, and as a result of his trip added a "consider- 
able" number of species to the botanical collection. 

Another noted botanist to explore the Mountains 
was William Oakes,^ who visited them, in company 

1 There is a memoir of him in the American Journal of Science and 
Arts for January, 1849, by Asa Gray, who calls him "the most dis- 
tinguished botanist of New England." Oakes was born at Danvers, 
July I, 1799. and was drowned by falling overboard from a ferryboat 
between Boston and East Boston, July 31, 1848, it is supposed as a 
result of a sudden attack of faintness or vertigo. He graduated in 
1820 from Harvard, where his previous fondness for natural history 
was developed under the instruction of Professor W. D. Peck. Oakes 
named Mounts Clay and Jackson, sending his guide to the summit of 
the latter to kindle a bonfire there to celebrate the event. His own 

37 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

with his friend Dr. Charles Pickering, in 1825, 
again in 1826, and from 1843 on, every summer. To 
him we are indebted for additions to our botanical 
knowledge, but especially for one of the classics of 
White Mountain literature, his "Scenery of the 
White Mountains," a book consisting of descriptive 
letterpress accompanying large lithographic plates 
from drawings by Isaac Sprague.^ His purpose of 
publishing a smaller volume to be called "The Book 
of the White Mountains" and to consist of descrip- 
tions of things of interest, a flora of the alpine plants, 
with the mosses and lichens, and a complete guide 
for visitors, was frustrated by his tragic death the 
year (1848) of the publication of his "Scenery." 

name is perpetuated in the Mountains by Oakes Gulf, the deep ravine 
to the east of Mounts Pleasant and Franklin. 

^ There are in all sixteen full folio pages of plates. The sixteenth 
plate and a part of the fourteenth are from paintings by G. N. 
Frankenstein, a well-known artist of Cincinnati, after whom a cliff 
and a railroad trestle in the Crawford Notch are named. 



Ill 

FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 
I. THE TOWNS 

It was not until the latter part of the eighteenth 
century that the New England colonies were suf- 
ficiently established, and the country secure enough 
from Indian depredations, for the settlement of the 
remoter regions to be thought of and attempted. 
Fryeburg, just over the New Hampshire border in 
Maine, appears to be the first town in this region to 
have been chartered. The land there was granted, 
in March, 1762, to General Joseph Frye of Andover, 
Massachusetts, an officer in the king's army, in con- 
sideration of his gallant deeds on the frontier. The 
conditions of the grant were, according to Willey, — 

That he should give bond to the province treasurer to 
have the township settled with sixty good families, each 
of which should have built, within the term of five years, 
a good house, twenty feet by eighteen, and seven feet 
stud, and have cleared seven acres for pasturage and till- 
age. He should reserve one sixty-fourth of the township 
for the first Protestant minister, one sixty-fourth for a 
parsonage forever, one sixty-fourth for a school fund for- 
ever, one sixty-fourth for Harvard College forever. A 
Protestant minister was to be settled in the township 
within ten years. 

It was supposed that all of the land granted to 
General Frye was located in the province of Maine, 

39 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

but it was subsequently found that a considerable 
part of it was in New Hampshire. The readjustment 
of grants that was made after this became known 
is described farther on, where the settlement of Con- 
way is narrated. 

Nathaniel Smith made the first settlement on the 
west line of the town, on the same site as that of the 
ancient Indian village of Pequawket (or "Pegwag- 
get," as Winthrop spelled it). Smith was, according 
to Willey, "a sort of squatter, led hither of his own 
free will and inclination." ''His cabin was reared," 
the historian says further, "and his family moved 
into it the year succeeding the grant, in the sum- 
mer of 1763." Among the other early settlers were 
Moses Ames, John and David Evans, Samuel Os- 
good, David Page, Nathaniel Frye, and Joseph 
Frye, Jr., who came chiefly from Concord, New 
Hampshire, and Andover, Massachusetts. To reach 
this point, they had to make their way through an 
unbroken wilderness for sixty or seventy miles. 
Their nearest white neighbors were, for a time, 
the inhabitants of Saco, and Sanford, nearly sixty 
miles distant, was their source of supplies. The only 
mode of conveyance was on horses and their only 
way thither was a blazed trail. Such were the hard- 
ships these first settlers had to encounter, and the 
willingness to endure them indicates of what stern 
stuff the pioneers were made! Fryeburg grew rap- 
idly, in fact attained nearly its full size in a few 
years, and was for some time the chief village in the 
White Mountain region. It was incorporated in 
January, 1777. The locality had been a favorite 

40 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

resort of the Indians, and for many years after the 
dispersion of the Pequawket tribe, solitary members 
of it continued to linger about their old home. 
Many of them fought on the American side in the 
Revolution and rendered good service, receiving 
testimonials for it from the Government. 

The New England colonists had visited this region 
on several occasions long before its settlement was 
thought of, and for a very different purpose. In the 
early part of the eighteenth century, during Queen 
Anne's War, the savages, who were allies of the 
French, became very troublesome to the English 
settlements, keeping the colonists in a continual 
state of alarm by their attacks and depredations. 
At length, the authorities of Massachusetts, goaded 
to desperation by this condition and by fresh forays, 
determined upon punitive measures. Accordingly, 
in September, 1703, a force of three' hundred and 
sixty soldiers was sent to invade the Pequawket 
country. But, on account of the obstacles they had 
to encounter in their journey and the ignorance of 
their guides, this incursion availed little. Another 
punitive expedition was undertaken in the autumn 
of the same year by Colonel March, of Casco, with 
very little success. He happened upon a party of 
Indians and twelve of them were either killed or 
captured. This partial success encouraged the 
General Court to offer a bounty of forty pounds for 
scalps, in the hope of inducing thereby more effective 
measures to be taken for preventing Indian raids on 
the settlements and for inflicting further punish- 
ment on the savages. One consequence of this offer 

41 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

was a snowshoe expedition, made in midwinter 
through the mountain passes and led by Colonel 
Tyng, of Tyngsboro, which brought back five of 
those repulsive trophies. 

On May 8, 1725, O.S., occurred the foremost 
military event in the history of this entire region, 
the battle of Pequawket, or battle of Lovewell's 
Pond, as it is more usually called, the name of the 
brave commander of the white men having been 
later given to the pond on the border of which this 
engagement took place. This remote lakelet, sit- 
uated in the midst of the woods and bordered by 
low hills, with its two islets and its placid waters, 
has to-day nothing about it suggestive of warfare, 
but rather everything suggestive of peace and 
quiet ; but its north shore was once the scene of one 
of the bloodiest combats in the Indian history of 
New England. 

During the year 1724 the Indians were uncom- 
monly bold and! savage and committed numerous 
depredations upon the more exposed settlements, 
such as Dunstable,^ killing a considerable number of 
white men. In September of this year, the Indians 
carried away two men from the town just mentioned 
and killed eight or nine of the ten men sent in pur- 
suit. The General Court of Massachusetts, aroused 
by the report of these forays and killings, passed a 
bill offering a bounty of a hundred pounds for every 
Indian scalp. 

^ Dunstable (later Nashua) was then a frontier town of Massa- 
chusetts, being south of the then recognized boundary between that 
colony and New Hampshire. The latter did not become an entirely 
separate colony until 1741. 

42 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

Captain John Lovewell, the son of an ensign in 
Cromwell's army, was an able colonial partisan, and 
his expeditions against the Indians were among the 
most successful of the retaliatory measures of the 
colonists. In December, 1724, with a few followers, 
he killed one Indian and took prisoner another, a 
boy, northeast of Lake Winnepesaukee. In Feb- 
ruary, 1725, he led a force of forty men to the head 
of Salmon Falls River, now in Wakefield, New 
Hampshire, where he came upon a party of ten In- 
dians, who were asleep by their fires. Stationing his 
men advantageously, he killed the entire number. 
For the ten scalps his force received one thousand 
pounds when it reached Boston after a triumphal 
march there. We can realize to how desperate a pass 
the struggle between the settlers and the Indians 
had come, when we know that Lovewell's party did 
not wait to learn whether the Indians were friendly 
or not, but assumed, from their possession of new 
guns, much ammunition, and spare blankets and 
moccasins, that they were on a marauding excursion. 
That they had killed Indians was all the soldiers 
cared to know. 

Lovewell's last and most memorable expedition, 
which resulted in the bloody encounter by the pond, 
left Dunstable on April 15, 1725, with the object 
of attacking the Indian village of Pequawket on the 
Saco. His force on this occasion consisted at the 
start of forty-six men, volunteers from Dunstable, 
Woburn, Concord, and other towns in the vicinity. 
It was an arduous and dangerous undertaking, a 
desperate adventure, to attempt to march more than 

43 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

a hundred miles into the wilderness, much of which 
was unbroken and all of which was without a 
friendly habitation or inhabitant. But Lovewell was 
a daring spirit and he had brave companions. By 
sickness, which compelled some to return and others 
to remain near Ossipee Pond, their ranks were re- 
duced to thirty-four when they reached Saco (now 
Lovewell's) Pond on Thursday, May 6. Until Sat- 
urday morning they lay encamped on the west 
shore in the vicinity of the chief Indian village, pre- 
paring for the encounter, uncertain whether their 
presence had been detected, fearful of attack in the 
darkness of the night, and undecided as to what 
course were best to pursue. They were glad when 
Saturday morning dawned after a night of alarm, 
in which they had listened to the distant barking 
of dogs and the stealthy marching of Indians, as 
it seemed, in their near vicinity. After they had 
breakfasted and while they were at their devotions, 
a gunshot was heard and soon they caught sight of 
an Indian on a point of land on the opposite side 
of the pond. Concluding that the main body of 
the enemy was on the north side, the intrepid band 
marched thither. When they reached the slight 
elevation at the northeast point of the pond, they 
left their packs there. Freed from these impedi- 
ments, they advanced cautiously and soon dis- 
covered an Indian, who had evidently been out 
hunting, and who, according to Belknap, was the 
Indian previously seen. They ambushed him, but 
missed him at the first fire, and he was not killed 
until after he had mortally wounded their leader 

44 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

and also wounded another of their company. Then 
they started back for the place where the packs had 
been left. 

Meanwhile the sachem Paugus, with forty-one 
warriors ^ in two companies, had discovered and 
counted the packs and had laid an ambuscade with 
the design of so surprising Lovewell's men as to 
cause them to surrender at once. When the white 
men came up and began searching for their packs, 
the Indians suddenly sprang up, with a terrible 
whoop, fired their guns directly over the heads of the 
whites and ran toward them with ropes demanding 
if they would have quarter. Replying that it would 
be "only at the muzzles of their guns," the brave 
captain and his band began the battle by rushing 
toward the Indians, firing as they advanced. Love- 
well's men drove the Indians some distance by their 
charge, but were repulsed by a counter-charge in 
which the wounded Lovewell and eight of his men 
were killed. Then the intrepid band began a retreat, 
fighting step by step, until they reached a spot where 
a ridge of rocks was on their left, with the pond at 
their rear and the mouth of a brook on their right. 
Here they made a stand and continued to fight, 
maintaining their position until sundown, when the 
savages retreated, under the command of Wahwa. 
They left many dead and wounded, including 
Paugus, who was killed, late in the contest, prob- 

^ One account says seventy, another eighty, and another sixty- 
three. Belknap, however, declares that there were two companies and 
that their number was forty-one, and says in support of this statement 
that he had it from Evans, who had it from one of the Indians who 
was in the fight. 

45 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ably by the fearless Ensign Seth Wyman, who had 
become the final leader of the white men. It had 
been a protracted and fierce fight at close quarters, 
the hideous yells of the Indians, the cheers of the 
whites, and the cracks of the muskets mingling in 
an indescribable hurly-burly. Chaplain Frye, after 
he was mortally wounded and could fight no longer, 
was often heard praying audibly for victory. 

About midnight, when it became certain that 
the savages would not return to renew the contest, 
the remnant of the command, of whom only nine 
remained unwounded, began their memorable re- 
turn. Thirteen or more of their number they left 
dead or dying on the field; four others, after they 
had gone but a mile and a half, found they could go 
no farther. The main party of eleven reached Dun- 
stable on May 13 in the night. Several of those left 
behind managed after terrible sufferings to reach 
Dunstable or one or other of the coast settlements. 
Such is the story of the bloody battle ^ of Love- 
well's Pond, which has been described at some 
length because of its intrinsic interest and because it 
was the only contest of this sort within the White 
Mountain region. 

The Indians soon abandoned their village here 
and retired to St. Francis on the St. Lawrence. The 
bodies of the dead white men were buried a short 
time afterward by a party under Colonel Tyng, 
which went to the scene of the action for the pur- 

^ A number of ballads and poems have been composed on this his- 
toric encounter, including an early anonymous ballad and the first 
printed production of Longfellow. 

46 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

poses of succoring the wounded and of attacking the 
Indians, if any were to be found. 

Starr King has said of this historic pond that it 
is "more deeply dyed with tradition than any other 
sheet of water in New England." The village within 
whose limits the pond lies and whose settlement and 
growth have already been recorded is idyllic for its 
beauty and tranquillity and has a number of in- 
teresting associations. Here Daniel Webster taught 
in the noted academy for nine months in 1802, and 
often, it is said, he fished in Lovewell's Pond. Frye- 
burg was the old home of a number of prominent 
New England families, such as the Osgoods and the 
Danas ; poets have made it a place of resort and have 
written of its beauties and noble views ; and Howells 
has placed here the scene of the opening chapter of 
his "A Modern Instance." 

The only notable happening in the latter-day his- 
tory of this quiet White Mountain village occurred 
at the end of August, 1906, when the principal 
hotel, the Oxford, built about fifteen years before, 
was burned to the ground, together with many 
houses and stores. The fire started at 10.30 a.m., 
from some unknown cause, in the kitchen of the 
hotel and quickly spread, fanned by a high wind, to 
the neighboring houses. The whole business center 
was threatened and aid was summoned from Portland 
and elsewhere. Fortunately, the time of the occur- 
rence of the fire enabled the guests all to get out in 
safety. From the village the fire spread to the woods 
in the direction of Lovewell's Pond, where it burned 
fiercely all night and for some time after. Between 

47 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

twenty-five and thirty buildings were destroyed, the 
total property loss being $100,000. The burning of 
the only large hotel in the village was a great blow 
to it as a summer resort, one, indeed, from which it 
has not as yet recovered. 

Plymouth, beautiful for situation, on a terrace 
near the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Bakers 
Rivers, is on the border of the White Mountain 
region and has from early times been an important 
town. It was granted, July 15, 1763, to Joseph 
Blanchard and others, and the first settlement was 
made in the summer of the next year by Captain 
James Hobart and Lieutenant Zachariah Parker, of 
Hollis. Other settlers, with their families, joined 
them in the autumn. The intervales of Plymouth 
were doubtless favorite resorts of the Indians for 
hunting, and, according to tradition, they had a vil- 
lage or encampment near the mouth of Bakers River. ^ 
Indian remains of various kinds have been found in 
this vicinity. 

\r In the year 1 71 2, Captain Baker, of Newbury, led 
a force of Massachusetts rangers up the Pemige- 
wasset Valley and surprised a body of Indians at this 
place, killing several of them and plundering their 
wigwams of a large quantity of furs the savages 
had collected. According to a story of doubtful 
authenticity. Baker's company was pursued by 
a larger band of Indians, but escaped through a 
stratagem, which is said to have been due to a 
friendly redskin who had accompanied them and 

^ Its beautiful Indian name was Asquamchemauke! 
48 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

which deceived the pursuers as to the number of 
the pursued. After this foray into their ancestral 
domain, at any rate, the main body of the Pemige- 
wassets retired to Canada. 

A noted visitor to this particular region before the 
time of its settlement was the future hero of Ben- 
nington, who, in company with his brother William, 
David Stinson, and Amos Eastman, was trapping in 
April of the year 1752 within the limits of the present 
town of Rumney, north of Plymouth. When about 
to return home the party of trappers were surprised 
by a body of Indians. John Stark and Eastman were 
easily captured, as they were on the shore of a lake 
(afterward known as Lake Stinson) and had no 
chance to escape. The other two were in a canoe 
and attempted to get away, in which purpose 
William Stark alone was successful, Stinson being 
killed by a musket shot. The future general was 
taken to Canada, but was ransomed the next 
autumn. 

Formerly a shire town of Grafton County, Ply- 
mouth has always had a goodly number of profes- 
sional men among its permanent residents, and the 
beauty of its location and environment early at- 
tracted many summer visitors. The first county 
courthouse, which was raised before July, 1774, and 
which stood in the south part of the village until 
1876, when it was removed to a new location, re- 
stored (it had been used as a wheelwright's shop), 
and presented to the Young Ladies' Library Asso- 
ciation by a benefactor of the town, is historically 
interesting as the place where Daniel Webster made, 

49 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

in 1806, his first defense of a murderer and de- 
livered liis "only solitary" plea against capital 
punishment.^ The chief business of the village was 
formerly the manufacture of gloves, begun in 1835. 
The " Plymouth buck gloves" were for years widely 
esteemed, but, following a number of years of pros- 
perity, the business gradually declined. After the 
Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad reached 
Plymouth in 1850 and located its general offices 
there, the railroad and State business, combined 
with the fine natural advantages, soon rendered the 
town a rich and thriving one. When the lease of this 
railroad to the Boston and Lowell was made, in 
June, 1884, however, the business offices of the rail- 
road were lost to Plymouth. 

One of the next places to be settled in the White 
Hills was Conway, 2 the site of which was granted 
by Governor Benning Wentworth to Daniel Foster 
and others in October, 1765, on condition that each 
grantee should pay a rent, if it were demanded, of 
one ear of Indian corn annually for ten years, and, 
after the end of that period, of one shilling proc- 
lamation money for every one hundred acres. The 

* This was not the first plea made by Webster, as is usually stated. 
The correct statement of the matter is to be found in E. S. Stearns's 
History of Plymouth (1906). 

2 I am indebted for some facts about the settlement of Conway to 
an article on "The Town of Conway," by Mrs. Ellen McRoberts 
Mason in the Granite Monthly for June, 1896. Conway gets its name, 
according to Sweetser, " from that gallant old English statesman, 
Henry Seymour Conway, Walpole's friend, commander in chief of 
the British army, and, at the time when this mountain glen was 
baptized, a prominent champion of the liberties of America." 

50 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

charter was for 23,040 acres of land, with the ad- 
dition of 1040 acres for roads, ponds, mountains, 
rocks, etc. This land was divided into sixty-nine 
equal shares, and each grantee, or his heirs and as- 
signs, was required to plant and cultivate five acres 
of land within the term of five years, for each fifty 
acres contained in his share. Two shares, containing 
five hundred acres, were to be reserved for Governor 
Wentworth, one was to be reserved for the support 
of the gospel in heathen lands, one for the Church of 
England, one for the first settled minister, and one 
for the benefit of schools. Soon came an inflow of 
settlers from Concord, Pembroke, Exeter, Ports- 
mouth, Durham, Lee, and other places, who had 
been led to remove to this locality by the glowing 
accounts they had heard of the fertility of the soil 
and of the abundance of game and fish. These set- 
tlers received their lands under the Maine grants to 
General Frye, whose territory, it was found on the 
subsequent adjustment of the boundary between 
the province of New Hampshire and the province of 
Maine, included more than four thousand acres in 
New Hampshire. Finally, the general relinquished 
his land in Conway and selected an equal number 
of acres in Maine. This addition of land to Conway 
caused the area of that town to exceed the number of 
acres granted, and so, to remedy this state of affairs, 
the area was reduced by moving the northern 
boundary line farther south. By this strange hap 
the first settlers on the intervale lands proved to be 
the first settlers of Conway, when they might have 
been expected to be the first of Fryeburg, and some 

51 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

of those early settlers who would have been other- 
wise citizens of Conway became citizens of the town 
of Bartlett. 

Here on the intervales an Indian village or en- 
campment had formerly been situated, — the relics 
found have been mentioned, — and the savages 
enviously witnessed the inroads of the white men 
upon their favorite haunt. 

In 1766, Foster and several others built houses 
five miles farther north on the river bottoms and 
thus began the settlement of the village and future 
summer resort of North Conway. 

As Conway was incorporated by its charter, held 
its first proprietary meeting in the town of Chester, 
December 2, 1765, elected its officers, and has ever 
since kept up its organization, it was the first White 
Mountain town, antedating Fryeburg by more than 
eleven years. 

During the next thirty or forty years most of the 
other now well-known places were established. The 
site of the town of Jefferson was granted, under 
the name of Dartmouth, to Colonel Goffe, in 1765, 
and again, in 1772, to Theodore Atkinson, Mark H. 
Wentworth, and others. It was settled about 1773 
by Colonel Joseph Whipple, who was the first set- 
tler to come through the Notch, and who owned a 
vast area and exercised for many years an almost 
feudal sway over the country in the vicinity of his 
home. The town was incorporated under its present 
name in 1796. 

An adventure of Colonel Whipple's, related by 

52 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

Willey and others, exhibits his bravery and re- 
sourcefulness. During the Revolutionary War, a 
party of Indians under the control of the English 
were admitted to his house, and, before he was 
aware of their purpose, the colonel was made pris- 
oner. Being permitted to go to his bedroom to 
secure some clothes for his journey with the Indians, 
he managed, while his housekeeper was entertaining 
the Indians with some mechanical articles, to make 
his escape from the window. Going to a field where 
some of his men were at work, he ordered each of 
them to shoulder a stake from the fence as he would 
a gun. Thus reinforced the colonel again presented 
himself before the Indians, who were in pursuit of 
him. The enemy, seeing as they supposed a body 
of armed men approaching, hurriedly seized what 
plunder they could lay their hands upon and fled. 

Among the defiles at the head of Israel's River ^ 
tradition locates the destruction of a detachment 
of Rogers's Rangers under horrible circumstances. 
In October, 1759, the famous colonial partisan, 
having led about one hundred and fifty of his vet- 
erans to the St. Lawrence, made a night attack on 
the Indian village of St. Francis, surprising the sav- 
ages when they were sleeping after having spent most 
of the night in a grand dance. The village was 
plundered and burned, after its inhabitants had been 
killed or dispersed, and thus the errand on which 

^ This river, alas! is named after Israel Glines, a noted hunter and 
trapper of this region in the eighteenth century, whose brother John 
gave his name to a stream which runs through the neighboring village 
of Whitefield. Singrawack, said to mean "The Foaming Stream of 
the White Rock," is its Indian name! 

53 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Rogers had been sent by General Amherst was ac- 
compHshed. The victorious white men carried off 
the church plate, the candlesticks, and a large silver 
image. , They kept together for about ten days, when, 
their provisions failing, the rangers broke up into 
small parties that they might the better procure 
subsistence by hunting. Two of these parties were 
overtaken by pursuing bodies of Indians, who cap- 
tured or killed most of the unfortunate rangers. The 
main body, after enduring extreme suffering from 
hunger, finally reached Charlestown, or Number 
Four, the nearest place of relief. One party of nine, 
which had the silver image, attempted, so the story 
goes, to find a way of escape through the Notch, 
but was misled by a treacherous Indian guide, who 
piloted the unfortunate men into the gorges of 
Israel's River and fled after poisoning one of them 
with a rattlesnake's fang. Under terrible hardships 
all but one of the rangers, it is said, perished. The 
survivor eventually reached the settlements. The 
golden candlesticks of the church of St. Francis were 
found near Lake Memphremagog in 1816 and the 
early settlers of Coos came upon various relics of the 
rangers, but the silver image has not been recovered. 
Numerous legends have grown up about this 
romantic episode, the most beautiful of which is that 
of a lonely (hunter encamped one night up among 
the White Hills. The night mist rolled back and 
disclosed "a great stone church, and within this was 
an altar, where from a sparkling censer rose a curl- 
ing wreath of incense-smoke, and around it lights 
dispersed a mellow glow, by which in groups before 

54 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

that altar appeared a tribe of savages kneeling in 
profound silence. A change came in the wind ; a song 
long and loud rose, as a voice-offering to the Great 
Spirit ; then glittering church spire, church and altar, 
vanished, and down the steep rock trailed a long line 
of strange-looking men, in solemn silence. Before 
all, as borne by some airy sprite, sported a glittering 
image of silver, which in the deep shadows changed 
to fairy shape, and, with sparkling wings, disappeared 
in the rent rocks." This was followed by a loud 
laugh of triumph, whereupon the hunter awoke. 

The pathetic story of Nancy, ^ who came up the 
Notch with Colonel Whipple and who lived with 
his family in Jefferson, may well be set down here. 
This poor girl, whose tragic fate is recalled by 
Nary:y's Brook, Nancy's Bridge, and Mount Nancy, 
near Bemis Station in the Crawford Notch, was en- 
gaged to a farmhand of the Colonel's, who had com- 
pletely won her affections. Her lover and she agreed 
to go to Portsmouth to be married. While she was 
at Lancaster, whither she had gone to make prep- 
arations for her journey through the wilderness, the 
prospective husband to whom she had entrusted 
her savings, the pay for two years' service, set out 
from Jefferson for Portsmouth, leaving no explana- 
tion or message for her. On her return at night she 
resolved to follow the recreant lover, in spite of all 

* Her surname appears to be somewhat uncertain. Frank H. 
Burt's Among the White Mountains (1884) gives it as Barton. The 
same surname is given in an article on Jefferson by J. M. Cooper, in 
the Granite Monthly for August, 1898. The White Mountain and 
Winnepissiogee Lake Guide Book (1846), makes it Rogers and even 
gives the name of the treacherous lover as Jim Swindell (!). 

55 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

dissuasion, in the hope of overtaking him before 
dawn in his probable camp in the Notch. But she 
arrived there after an arduous journey through the 
snow and in the teeth of a northwest wind, only to 
find the camp abandoned. As the ashes of the camp- 
fire were still warm, the dauntless girl determined to 
push on, but she was soon compelled to give up and 
to sink down in utter exhaustion, near the brook 
which has been given her Christian name. There, 
at the foot of a tree, she was found curled up in the 
snow by a party of men from Colonel Whipple's, 
who, alarmed for her safety, had followed her trail. 
The perfidious lover is said to have become insane 
on learning of her fate. This episode of Nancy, 
which is recorded in many books and the truth of 
which is vouched for by Ethan Allen Crawford and 
by J. H. Spaulding, as told to them by persons who 
knew the facts, is assigned to the year 1778. 

Another servant of Colonel Whipple's, who was 
said to be the first of her sex to come through the 
Notch, was a woman who in her old age was known 
as Granny Stalbird or Starbird. Having learned 
from the Indians the virtues of various roots and 
herbs, she became, after the death of her husband, 
a noted doctress, famous all through this region for 
her skill. A number of stories of her adventures and 
eccentricities have been handed down. Her memory 
was gratefully cherished by the early settlers for her 
many deeds of mercy. Among her patients was 
Ethan Allen Crawford, who was once treated by her 
for an injury to his foot. 

Lancaster, named after Lancaster, Massachusetts, 

56 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

whence several of its early settlers came, was granted 
in July, 1763, to Captain David Page and others 
and was occupied in the autumn of the same year 
by Captain Page, Edward Bucknam, and Emmons 
Stockwell and their famiHes. The troubles of the 
Revolutionary War hindered the progress of the new 
settlement, all the inhabitants but Stockwell and 
his family leaving the new town for older and more 
secure settlements. Stockwell's brave determination 
to stay and abide the consequences induced some, 
emboldened by his example, to return. 

Littleton was chartered in November, 1764, under 
the name of Chiswick. Among the grantees, who 
were mostly from southeastern Connecticut, was 
James Avery, who had associated with himself 
twelve others of the same name and many relatives 
and who thus controlled the franchise. This he dis- 
posed of to Colonel Moses Little and his associates 
in 1768. On account of non-compliance with the 
provisions of the charter, the town was rechartered in 
January, 1770, under the name of Apthorp. The 
first settlement was made shortly after by Captain 
Nathan Caswell, who was induced by the energetic 
proprietors of Apthorp to leave his home in Orford 
and make a hazard of new fortunes in the Am- 
monoosuc wilderness. Caswell reached his new 
home on the nth of April, 1770. He found there 
only a barn, in which his son, Apthorp, was born 
that night, the first white child born v/ithin the 
limits of Littleton. In November, 1 784, when Dalton^ 

^ The name of the daughter town perpetuates that of the Honor- 
able Tristram Dalton, another of the early proprietors of Apthorp. 

57 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

was separated from Apthorp and incorporated, the 
name of the mother town was changed to the pres- 
ent one, in honor of the principal proprietor. 

Franconia was granted in 1764 under its present 
name to Jesse Searle and others. No move was made 
by them toward settlement, so a more extensive 
grant was made in 1772 to Sir Francis Bernard, 
Bart., His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, the 
Honorable Corbyn Morris, Esq., and others, the 
tract being called Morristown in honor of the last- 
named gentleman. Franconia was settled perma- 
nently two years later by Captain Artemas Knight, 
Zebedee Applebee, and others. These conflicting 
grants later gave rise to much controversy, and it 
was not until nearly the beginning of the nineteenth 
century that the dispute was finally settled in favor 
of the original grantees. The name of Franconia was 
reassumed in 1782. 

The town owed its early prosperity mainly to the 
discovery of iron ore in the vicinity. In December, 
1805, a company was incorporated under the name 
of the New Hampshire Iron Factory Company. The 
principal works, which were owned by this company, 
were situated on the Gale River and consisted of a 
blast furnace, a cupola furnace, a forge, a machine 
shop, etc. About the middle of the last century from 
twenty to thirty men were constantly employed and 
two hundred and fifty tons of pig iron and from two 
to three hundred tons of bar iron were produced 
annually. The ore, which was said to be the richest 
up to then discovered in the United States, was ob- 
tained from a mountain in the east part of Lisbon, 

58 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

about three miles from the furnace. The works have 
long since ^ been abandoned, but the remains of the 
furnace are plainly to be seen on the west bank of 
the river near the point where the road to Sugar Hill 
leaves the main thoroughfare of Franconia. Not far 
from this establishment were the upper works, called 
''The Haverhill and Franconia Iron works," which 
were incorporated in 1808 and which were built on 
the same plan as the other. 

Jackson was first settled by Benjamin Copp in 
1778.2 Here he and his family lived alone until other 
settlers came in 1790. Among these latter was Cap- 
tain Joseph Pinkham and his family (after whom 
the Pinkham Notch is named) , who came when the 
snow was five feet deep on the level. Their hand- 
sled, it is said, was drawn by a pig which had been 
taught to work in harness. The settlement was first 
called New Madbury, but, on its incorporation in 
1800, the name was changed to Adams. In 1829, to 
suit the prevailing political opinions, the name was 
again changed, to the present one. 

Berlin was granted in 1771 to Sir William Mayne, 
Bart., his relatives, Thomas, Robert, and Edward 
Mayne, and several others from Barbados. Its orig- 
inal name was Maynesborough, which was changed 
to the present one in 1829, when the town was in- 
corporated. 

^ About 1865, says a writer in the Granite Monthly, for August, 
1 88 1. According to another writer in the same periodical, operation 
was resumed in 1859 after some years of suspension and the buildings 
were burned in 1884. 

"^ Some books say 1779. The centennial of the settlement was 
celebrated on July 4, 1878. 

59 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Bartlett, named after the president of the State 
at the date of the town's incorporation (1790), was 
originally granted to William Stark and others for 
services during the French-and- Indian War. Two 
brothers by the name of Emery and a Mr. Harriman 
were among the first settlers there. A few years 
later, in 1777, Daniel Fox, Paul Jilly, and Captain 
Samuel Willey, from Lee, began a settlement in 
what is now known as Upper Bartlett. 

Whitefield was granted, as Whitefields, to Josiah 
Moody and others in July, 1774, and was occupied 
soon after by Major Burns and other settlers. It was 
incorporated December i, 1804. 

The territory originally occupied by the town of 
Bethlehem was almost exactly that of the lost town 
of Lloyd Hills, ^ said to have been granted by Gov- 
ernor Wentworth in or about 1774. This town had 
only a paper existence, as the records of the grant 
are lost and the original grantees probably made no 
effort to settle it. In the silence of the charter rec- 
ords of New Hampshire as to the town, we know of 
it through its being given as a boundary in the grant 
of Whitefield in 1774 and from its name appearing 
on Holland's map (1784). The royal government 
having been overthrown, the territory became the 
property of the State and the earlier grant was 
ignored. 

The first settlement in the limits of the town was 

made in 1790 by Jonas Warren, Nathaniel Snow, 

Amos Wheeler, and others. On December 27, 1799, 

the General Court of New Hampshire incorporated 

1 Various early histories say "Lord's Hill." 

60 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

the town of Bethlehem and the first town meeting 
was held March 4, 1800. Additions of territory were 
made in 1848 and in 1873. The hamlet of Bethlehem 
led a precarious existence in its early days. Famine 
frequently frowned on the settlement and in 1799 the 
inhabitants were reduced to such straits that they 
were compelled to make a load of potash and to 
send it to Concord, Massachusetts, a distance of 
one hundred and seventy miles, for sale, subsisting 
on roots and plants until their envoys returned with 
provisions, four weeks later. President Dwight, in 
1803, found chiefly log huts, the settlements being 
"recent, few, poor, and planted on a soil, singularly 
rough and rocky." "There is nothing in Bethlehem," 
he remarks, "which merits notice, except the pa- 
tience, enterprise and hardihood, of the settlers, 
which have induced them to venture, and stay, upon 
so forbidding a spot; a magnificent prospect of the 
White Mountains; and a splendid collection of other 
mountains in their neighbourhood." 

Lisbon, within whose limits is the summer resort 
of Sugar Hill, far-famed for the beauty of its views, 
was first granted to Joseph Burt and others on Au- 
gust 6, 1763, under the name later^ given to the town 
which was to become the capital of the State. Much 
of the same territory was included in the grant bear- 
ing the name of Chiswick, made the following year. 
By the failure of the grantees to make the required 
settlements, however, both grants were forfeited, 
and in October, 1768, another charter was issued, to 

^ The future state capital received its present name in June, 1765. 
It had previously been called Penacook, and Rumford. 

61 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Leonard Whiting and others, covering the territory 
now forming the town of Lisbon, the title of Gun- 
thwaite being bestowed upon the grant. For some 
time the name of the town was evidently somewhat 
unsettled, for it appears in State documents of 
twenty years later as "Concord, alias Gunthwaite." 
In 1824, by act of legislature the town was given the 
name it now bears. The discovery of gold in the 
town in 1866 created great excitement and many 
mining operations were set in motion. Soon the 
business became of a highly speculative nature, and 
during ten years the sum of $1,500,000, it is esti- 
mated, was squandered in such operations in Lisbon 
and vicinity. 

Woodstock, which received its present name in 
1840 by act of legislature, was first granted in Sep- 
tember, 1763, to Eli Demerit. On account of the in- 
definiteness or non-preservation of the records the 
course of events in the early history of the town is 
somewhat uncertain, but the charter appears to 
have been forfeited by non- settlement and the town 
to have been regranted, in 177 1, to Nathaniel Gush- 
man, Dr. Ebenezer Thompson, of Durham, and 
others, among whom was John Demerit, nephew of 
Eli, who had at least nine hundred acres. Most of 
the older authorities say that the town was origi- 
nally granted under the name of Peeling, then for a 
time was called Fairfield, and subsequently bore 
again, by restoration, the name of Peeling, until 
1840. They attribute the first settlement of the 
town to John Riant and others and make it date 
from about 1773. 

62 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

A recent writer,^ however, states that the town 
was originally granted under the name Fairfield and 
that in 1799 the legislature granted a town charter 
under the name of Peeling, the first town meeting of 
which any record is to be found being held in 1800. 
The same authority attributes the first settlement 
to one James McNorton, whose name does not ap- 
pear in the early history of Peeling, but who is 
stated to have built a home, soon after the original 
grant, on the east bank of the Pemigewasset. At the 
outbreak of the Revolution, he joined the patriot 
army, leaving a wife and children in his newly made 
home and being destined never to return, perish- 
ing, it is said, at Valley Forge. In all, the infant 
town furnished four soldiers to the Continental 
army. 

Randolph was granted in 1772 to John Durand 
and others, of London, and bore the name of its first 
proprietor until 1824, when it received the name of 
the famous Virginian. Its first settlers were Joseph 
Wilder and Stephen Jillson. 

Carroll, originally called Bretton Woods, which 
name has recently been revived and applied to the 
locality and railroad stations of two large summer 
hotels in the limits of the township, was granted 
February 8, 1772, to Sir Thomas Wentworth, Bart., 
the Reverend Samuel Langdon, and eighty-one 
others. The town, whose permanent population has 
always been small, received its present name in 
1832, the year of its incorporation. 

^ Justus Conrad, in his article "The Town of Woodstock," in the 
Granite Monthly for July, 1897. 

63 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Warren ^ was granted to John Page, of Kingston, 
near Portsmouth, and others, July 14, 1763, and 
settlement was commenced in the autumn of 1767 
by Joseph Patch, who came from HoUis, New Hamp- 
shire. The territory under the shadow of that out- 
lying mountain, Moosilauke, one of the finest of 
viewpoints, was the special stamping-ground of the 
Pemigewassets, a local sub-tribe, or family, of In- 
dians, whose retirement to Canada has been men- 
tioned. The first settlers inherited the clearings in 
which these red men used to plant their maize and 
bury their dead. The region had been the scene of 
much Indian warfare, and even after the Indians' 
departure and the advent of the white men, the dis- 
trict was a thoroughfare for marauding bands from 
Canada, who used to sweep down upon the de- 
fenseless Massachusetts towns, and for their white 
enemies in pursuing or making counter-attacks. 
The first habitations built here by the colonists were 
two log huts for the temporary shelter of travelers 
journeying to the Coos country. Patch lived like a 
hunter with no companion but a faithful dog. The 
first family, that of John Mills, of Portsmouth, came 
in the spring of 1768. They were followed the next 
year by an Irishman by the name of James Aiken, 
who discovered after he had built his log house that 
he had neighbors. Joshua Copp was the fourth set- 
tler. The next family to come was that of a Mr. 

^ The history of this town has been fully dealt with by William 
Little, whose History of Warren was published in 1870. The town 
is said to take its name from Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who com- 
manded the fleet in the attack on Louisburg in 1745; it may, how- 
ever, have been named after a town of the same name in England. 

64 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

True. Thus a hamlet was begun. The charter was 
renewed and a grant of additional territory made in 
1770. 

The town of Gorham, long a leading summer re- 
sort and now an important industrial community, 
formed until its corporation in 1836 a part of Shel- 
burne, which was chartered as early as 1769 and 
rechartered in 1770, soon after which date it was 
settled. 

An early incident in Shelburne's history has to do 
with an Indian raid. On August 3, 1781, a party of 
six of the savages who had visited Bethel and Gilead, 
Maine, capturing three men in the former and killing 
one in the latter, stopped at Shelburne on their way 
to Canada. At the house of Captain Rindge, they 
killed and scalped Peter Poor, and took Plato, a 
colored man, prisoner. The inhabitants, it is re- 
lated, after spending the night on "Hark Hill" in 
full hearing of the whoops and cries of the Indians, 
fled in a body to Fryeburg, fifty-nine miles distant, 
where they remained until the danger was past. 

The territory of the town of Campton, in the 
Pemigewasset Valley, formed, with that of the 
neighboring town of Rumney, a grant made, it ap- 
pears, in 1761, just after the English conquest of 
Canada, to Jared Spencer of East Haddam, Con- 
necticut, Christopher Holmes, and others. Camp- 
ton took its name from the circumstance that the 
proprietors built their camp within its limit when 
they came up to survey this town and Rumney. 
Owing to the death of Spencer at East Windsor, 
Connecticut, on his way home from New Hamp- 

65 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

shire, in 1762, before any settlement was made, his 
heirs and others obtained a new charter in 1767. The 
town was settled in 1765 by two families by the 
name of Fox and Taylor. Joseph and Hobart 
Spencer, two of the early settlers, were very likely 
sons of the original grantee. Though but in its in- 
fancy, the town furnished nine or ten soldiers to the 
Revolutionary army, five of whom died in the serv- 
ice. Thirty of its citizens laid down their lives in 
the war for the Union. Campton Village and West 
Campton early became favorite resorts for artists, 
who are attracted by the rich bits of meadow and 
woodland scenery which abound there. Following 
the artists came literary people and families in 
search of the summer quiet and restfulness not to 
be found in the more fashionable mountain resorts. 
Campton was a favorite resort of James T. and 
Annie Fields, and of Miss Larcom. At West Camp- 
ton was located, until its destruction a few years ago 
by fire, a famous inn, the Stag and Hounds, which 
was one of the most ancient among the Mountains 
and which in its early days was frequented by 
Durand, Gay, Gerry, Griggs, Richards, George L. 
Brown, and other landscape painters. 

The neighboring town of Thornton was granted, 
in 1763, to the family from which it gets its name, 
and was settled in 1770 by Benjamin Hoit. There is 
no village, but there are several groups of farms, 
Thornton Street, Thornton Center, and West 
Thornton. 

The southern outlying wall of the White Moun- 
tains is the picturesque and lofty Sandwich Range, 

66 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

terminating on the east in the beautiful peak of 
Chocorua in Albany. The immense mass of Sand- 
wich Dome, the slide-scarred Whiteface, and Pas- 
saconaway, loftiest of the summits of this group, are 
other notable features of the Range. On the south- 
erly side of these mountains is the pleasant town of 
Sandwich, which has attained considerable reputa- 
tion as a summer resort. It was granted originally 
in October, 1763, by Governor Benning Wentworth 
to Samuel Oilman, Jr., and others, of Exeter, and 
then contained an area of six miles square. Upon 
the representation of the grantees that the north and 
west sides of the tract were "so loaded with inac- 
cessible mountains and shelves of rocks, as to be 
uninhabitable," an additional grant of territory on 
the east and south, called Sandwich Addition, was 
made by the governor in September of the following 
year, bringing the total area up to ten miles square. 
The town was settled soon after 1765, when Or- 
lando Weed was granted by the proprietors at 
Exeter seven hundred acres, seventy pounds of law- 
ful money, and seven cows, on condition that he 
would settle seven families in Sandwich, build seven 
substantial dwelling-houses, and clear forty acres of 
land within three years. Among the first settlers 
were Daniel Beede, John Prescott, David Bean, 
Jeremiah Page, and Richard Sinclair. Members of 
many noted New England families later settled in 
the new township.- Soldiers were furnished to the 
Revolutionary army, a Sandwich regiment being 
honorably mentioned in the records of the battle of 
Bunker Hill. Many small industries were early 

67 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

established, but they declined after some years. 
Most of the descendants of the original settlers 
either were killed in the Civil War or moved away, 
the farms were taken possession of by strangers, 
and the town became mainly a summer resort. The 
picturesque village of Center Sandwich was another 
favorite haunt of the poet Lucy Larcom. 

Situated east of Sandwich and between the Sand- 
wich and Ossipee Ranges is the town of Tamworth, 
named after an English town on the river Tyne. The 
township was granted in October, 1766, to John 
Webster, Jonathan Moulton, and others, and was 
first settled in 1771 by Richard Jackman, Jonathan 
Choate, David Philbrick, and William Eastman. 

The early settlers endured uncommon hardships 
on account of an early frost, which cut ofT nearly all 
their crops and reduced the families almost to utter 
starvation. The men were often obliged to go thirty 
or forty miles to Gilmanton or to Canterbury for 
grain, which they brought from thence on their backs 
or on hand-sleds. Amid all their discouragements 
the pioneers resolved not to abandon the settle- 
ment. Fortunately, they killed now and then a deer 
or other animal whose flesh was palatable, and 
thus managed to sustain themselves until they were 
able to secure permanent relief. 

In the east part of the town, on the Chocorua 
River, is the small hamlet long known as Tamworth 
Iron Works, but now called Chocorua. An iron 
factory was established here before the Revolution, 
but was abandoned early in the nineteenth century. 
The metal was obtained from bog-iron ore in the bot- 

68 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

torn of Ossipee Lake. Here, in 1775, the first Ameri- 
can machine-made nails were turned out, and here 
also the first American screw-auger was made, in 
1780, Mr. Weed, the maker, having seen an auger 
on a British prize frigate at Portsmouth. Many 
anchors were cast at Tamworth and were hauled 
thence to Portsmouth on sledges. 

On account of the noble mountain scenery, the 
pleasant lowlands, and the beautiful lakes, Tam- 
worth has been a favorite resort of nature-lovers. 
Near Chocorua Lake are the summer residences 
of the late Horace E. Scudder, the late Professor 
William James, the late Frank Bolles, Secretary of 
Harvard University, and others. In the closing years 
of his life ex- President Cleveland found a summer 
home in Tamworth. 

Such are the facts, for the most part in brief state- 
ment, as to the settlement and early history of the 
principal towns in the Mountains. The later history 
of the towns is largely bound up with the story of the 
region's industrial development and so will be dealt 
with only as a part of this wider subject. In some 
cases, however, an event of recent occurrence, un- 
related to any general movement, has for conveni- 
ence been narrated, out of chronological order, in 
the foregoing pages. 



IV 

FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 
II. THE SOLITARY PLACES — THE WILLEY DISASTER 

The main interest of White Mountain settlement, 
however, lies aside from the history of the founding 
of the towns. It centers about the settlements made 
in the isolated places, such as Nash and Sawyer's 
Location and the Notch, where various individuals 
of hardy spirit established themselves; or, rather, 
the main interest lies in the settlers themselves of 
these localities and in the story of their hardships 
and of their perseverance. The names of Crawford, 
Rosebrook, and Willey are the most famous ones 
in this connection, and the days of the families of 
these names are the heroic days of White Mountain 
history. 

In 1792, Eleazar Rosebrook, a native of Grafton, 
Massachusetts, settled with his family in Nash and 
Sawyer's Location, in a then remote and lonesome 
spot in the valley of the Ammonoosuc, near the site 
of the present Fabyan House, now such a busy rail- 
road center in the summer. About 1775, he had come 
from Grafton with his wife and child into the re- 
mote district known as Upper Coos, making a tem- 
porary stay at Lancaster until he could look about 
and find such a place as he desired in which to set- 
tle. Pushing through the woods up the Connecticut 
River into what is now Colebrook (then known 

70 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

as Monadnock), he built a log cabin to which he 
brought his wife and two small children — a second 
child, a daughter, had been born to them at Lan- 
caster, Hannah Rosebrook was a true helpmate for 
such a sturdy pioneer, and she cheerfully endured 
the hardships and privations which their living in 
this solitary wilderness entailed. The narration of 
one or two homely incidents of their life here will 
show the mettle of this couple. They had taken with 
them a cow, and, as there were no fences, the animal 
was at liberty to go where she pleased. Many times 
Mrs. Rosebrook, when her husband was away, would 
shut her older child up in the house, and, taking 
her infant in her arms, would go in search of the 
animal, to which a bell was attached to enable her 
to be found. Expeditions of this nature would some- 
times take the courageous woman far into the woods 
and force her to wade the river to get to the animal, 
but she never flinched from any hardship of this 
sort. Salt was an article much needed in this coun- 
try and some families suffered considerably from 
lack of it. Once, when there was a shortage of this 
commodity, Rosebrook went on foot to Haverhill 
and returned, a distance of about eighty miles, with 
a bushel of it on his back. This was not regarded by 
this powerful and resolute man as any great feat. 

Rosebrook served in the army during the Revolu- 
tionary War. Before he left to join his company, 
the pioneer took his family for safety to North- 
umberland, where a sort of fort had been built. 
Here a son was born. A man named White, who had 
an invalid wife, thereupon kindly took Mrs. Rose- 

71 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

brook and her children into his house, giving them 
their board for what household service Mrs. Rose- 
brook could give. During a leave of absence from 
the army, Rosebrook removed his family to Guild- 
hall, Vermont. He rendered brave service in the 
army. On one occasion an officer and he had a nar- 
row escape from capture when they were sent to 
Canada as spies, their pursuers being outwitted by 
a clever stratagem of Rosebrook's. 

While her husband was in the army, Indians fre- 
quently came to the house where Mrs. Rosebrook 
was staying, and she had to tolerate their presence, 
as she feared to incur their displeasure when there 
was no man to resist them. On one occasion, how- 
ever, when they had become intoxicated, she cleared 
her house of them, even dragging one drunken squaw 
out by the hair of the head, and narrowly escaping 
a tomahawk thrown by the angry female, who, when 
sober, came back next day, begged Mrs. Rose- 
brook's forgiveness, and promised amendment, 
which promise, it is said, was strictly kept. 

At Guildhall the Rosebrooks remained for many 
years in comparative comfort, but at length, life 
having become too easy, the pioneer determined to 
move again, making in January, 1792, the change 
already mentioned. At the place to which he then 
came, his son-in-law, Abel Crawford, was living 
alone in a small hut, he having bought out three or 
four settlers who had decided to leave. Mr. Rose- 
brook in turn bought Crawford out, and, soon after, 
the latter, "rather than to be crowded by neigh- 
bors," moved twelve miles down the Saco River 

72 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

into Hart's Location, near the present Bemis Sta- 
tion, where he lived to a great age, known and loved 
as the " Patriarch of the Mountains." Here he built, 
some time previous to 1820, the Mount Crawford 
House, which was kept for many years by his son-in- 
law, Nathaniel T. P. Davis, and whose site is east 
of the railroad track at Bemis. 

Rosebrook lived in his new place of abode for a 
number of years in a small log cabin. At length, 
having sold his farm in Guildhall, he laid out the 
proceeds on his property here. The turnpike through 
the Notch was incorporated, as has been stated, in 
1803. It was some time in that year that Rose- 
brook, as travel and business had increased, built 
a large and convenient two-story dwelling, with two 
rooms underground, on the high mound afterwards 
called the "Giant's Grave." He also built a large 
barn, stables, sheds, and mills. This house in the 
Ammonoosuc Valley, at the present Fabyan station, 
was the first house for the accommodation of 
travelers erected in the White Mountains. Here 
Rosebrook lived and prospered for the rest of his 
days. He died in 1817,^ at seventy years of age, 
from a cancer, after patiently enduring great suf- 
fering. 

* The inscription on his headstone in the little cemetery on the 
knoll near Fabyan reads as follows: — 

"In memory of Cap. Eliezer Rosbrook [sic] who died Sept. 25, 
1817 in the 70 year of his age. 

"When I lie buried deep in dust, 
My flesh shall be thy care. 
These with'ring limbs with thee I trust 
To raise them strong and fair." 

The headstone to his wife's grave, on which the name is spelled 
correctly, states that she died May 4, 1829, aged 84. 

73 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

President Dwight, who, as we have seen, stayed 
overnight at Rosebrook's on his first journey to the 
Mountains, thus speaks of his host: — 

This man, with a spirit of enterprise and industry, and 
perseverance, which has surmounted obstacles, demanding 
more patience and firmness, than are in many instances 
required for the acquisition of empire, planted himself in 
this spot, in the year 1788. . . . Here he stationed himself 
in an absolute wilderness ; and was necessitated to look for 
everything which was either to comfort or support life, 
to those, who lived at least twenty miles from him, and to 
whom he must make his way without a road. By his in- 
dustry he has subdued a farm of one hundred and fifty, 
or two hundred acres; and built two large barns, the very 
boards of which he must have transported from a great 
distance with such expense and difficulty, as the inhab- 
itants of older settlements would think intolerable. . . . 
Hitherto he has lived in a log hut; in which he has enter- 
tained most of the persons traveling in this road during 
the last eight years. . , . For the usual inconveniences of 
a log house we were prepared ; but we found comfortable 
beds, good food, and excellent fare for our horses; all 
furnished with as much good-will, as if we had been near 
friends of the family. Our entertainment would by most 
Englishmen, and not a small number of Americans, be 
regarded with disdain. To us it was not barely comfort- 
able; it was, in the main, pleasant. . . . During twelve out 
of fourteen years, this honest, industrious man laboured 
on his farm without any legal title. The proprietor ^ was 
an inhabitant of New York; and sold him the land through 
the medium of an agent. When he bought it, the agent 
promised to procure a deed for him speedily. Through- 
out this period he alternately solicited, and was promised, 
the conveyance, which had been originally engaged. Nor 

^ This is different from what is given on a preceding page, which 
is taken from the Crawford History, the chief source for information 
about Rosebrook and Ethan Allen Crawford. 

74 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

did he resolve, until he had by building and cultivation 
encreased the value of his farm twenty fold, to go in per- 
son to New York, and demand a deed of the proprietor 
himself. The truth is; he possesses the downright un- 
suspecting integrity, which, even in men of superior un- 
derstanding often exposes them to imposition, from a con- 
fidence honourable to themselves, but, at times, unhappily 
misplaced. Here, however, the fact was otherwise : for the 
proprietor readily executed the conveyance, according to 
the terms of the original bargain. In my journey of 1803, 
I found Rosebrook in possession of a large, well-built 
farmer's house, mills and various other conveniences; and 
could not help feeling a very sensible pleasure at finding 
his industry, patience, and integrity thus rewarded. 

Rosebrook left his property to his grandson, 
Ethan Allen Crawford, who, with his cousin and, 
later, wife, Lucy Howe, had tenderly cared for his 
grandfather in his last illness. Crawford, whose 
grave, situated in the little cemetery ^ not far from 
the Fabyan House and marked with a modest shaft, 
is seen yearly by thousands, was the most famous of 
the pioneers of the White Mountains. From his 
great strength and his stature — Starr King and 
others say "He grew to be nearly seven feet in 
height," but a daughter affirms that he stood just 
six feet two and one-half inches in his stockings — 
he was known as the "Giant of the Hills." He was 
born in 1792 in Guildhall, Vermont. When he was 

1 What more fitting resting-place for the remains of the pioneer 
could have been found! Here he lies near the site of his hotel and in 
view of the Notch named after his family and of the mountain up 
which so many times he guided persons. This is truly a hallowed 
spot, containing, as it does, the dust of four such noble men and 
women as Eleazar and Hannah Rosebrook and Ethan Allen and Lucy 
Crawford. 

75 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

an infant, his parents, as we have seen, moved to 
Hart's Location in New Hampshire and lived in a 
log house in the wilderness, twelve miles from neigh- 
bors in one direction and six miles in the other. Here 
he grew up in circumstances that made him tough 
and healthy. In 1811, he enHsted as a soldier for 
eighteen months. Soon he was taken sick with what 
he called "spotted fever," and, when he was recov- 
ering, he started for home on a furlough, reaching 
there, traveling mostly on foot, in fourteen days. 
After regaining his health, he returned to his duty. 
Upon the expiration of his term of service, he en- 
gaged in various occupations, such as making roads, 
working on a river, and farming. On the 8th and 
9th of June, 1 81 5, he records that the ground froze 
and snow fell to the depth of a foot or more, lasting 
for two days, during which he drew logs to a saw- 
mill with four oxen. His extraordinary strength ap- 
pears from his being able to lift a barrel of potash 
weighing five hundred pounds and to put it into 
a boat, hoisting it two feet. There was only one 
other man of those working with him who could do 
more than lift one end of the barrel. He had settled 
in Louisville, New York, near a brother, and had 
got a good start when, in 1816, a letter was received 
from his grandfather Rosebrook, telling of his illness 
and asking for one of them to come to live with him. 
Ethan went to visit his grandfather, not intending 
to stay permanently with him, but when the af- 
flicted old man entreated him with tears to make 
his future home here, Ethan's determination to re- 
main in Louisville was overcome. Returning to that 

76 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

place, he sold his property there and came back to 
his grandparents, assuming the indebtedness on the 
farm and taking care of them, as has been noted. 
Then began his connection with the region in whose 
early annals he played so important a part. 

In July, 1818, less than a year after his grand- 
father's death, while Crawford was absent, his 
house took fire and burned to the ground, causing 
him a loss from which he was never able to recover. 
With the help of his neighbors, a small house, 
twenty-four feet square, which belonged to him and 
was situated one and a half miles distant, was drawn 
by oxen to the site of the burned house. This was 
fitted up so as to be a comfortable home for the 
winter of 1819. In it he entertained individuals who 
came along, as best he could, but parties were com- 
pelled to go to his father's, eight miles from the 
Notch, for accommodation. From year to year he 
struggled along, working at various occupations, 
such as assisting travelers up and down the Notch, 
guiding people up Mount Washington, and building 
paths, endeavoring all the while to lighten the 
pecuniary burden which he was carrying. 

In 1 819, with his father, he opened the first path 
to Mount Washington, which started from the site 
of the present Crawford House, and which was im- 
proved into a bridle path by Thomas J. Crawford 
in 1840. This trail was advertised in the news- 
papers and soon visitors began to come. In the sum- 
mer of 1820, a party consisting of Adino N. Brackett, 
John W. Weeks, General John Wilson, Charles J. 
Stuart, Noyes S. Dennison, Samuel A. Pearson, 

77 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

all of Lancaster, and Philip Carrigain, "the author 
of the New Hampshire Map" (as Mr. Crawford 
quaintly puts it) , made the ascent of the chief peak 
of the Presidential Range and gave names to such 
peaks as were unnamed. These were Adams, Jef- 
ferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, and Pleasant. 
They engaged, as guide and baggage-carrier, Mr. 
Crawford, who has given a brief account of the ex- 
pedition, which is enlivened by a quiet humor. He 
was, he says, "loaded equal to a pack horse," as the 
"party of distinguished characters" wished to be 
prepared to stay two nights. They reached the top 
of Washington via the Notch, where they stayed 
some hours enjoying the prospect and naming the 
peaks as aforesaid. Descending to a lower level, they 
spent one night. Mr. Crawford recorded that he was 
"tired to the very bone" that night through being 
compelled virtually to carry one member of the 
party, "a man of two hundred weight," who for 
some reason was not able to get along without his 
assistance. About a month later, Brackett, Weeks, 
and Stuart, accompanied by Richard Eastman, 
spent a week in leveling to the tops of all these 
mountains from Lancaster, camping on them four 
nights, one of which, that of August 31, was passed 
on the summit of Mount Washington. The height 
of the highest peak was computed by them to be 
6428 feet. 

The following summer, Crawford cut a new and 
shorter path ^ to the summit of Mount Washington, 

^ This path was made passable to horses by Horace Fabyan soon 
after 1840 and was known thereafter as the Fabyan Bridle Path. 

78 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

which went directly up over a course nearly the 
same as that of the present railroad. On August 31 
of the same year (1821), three young ladies, the 
Misses Austin, formerly of Portsmouth, came to 
Crawford's house to ascend the hills, as they wished 
to have the honor of being the first women to reach 
the top of Mount Washington. They were accom- 
panied by their brother, a friend of the family, and 
a tenant on their farm in Jefferson. They went as 
far as Crawford's first camp that night, but, bad 
weather coming on, they could go no farther, and 
were compelled to stay there until a more favorable 
day should come. When their stock of provisions 
began to fail, Mr. Faulkner, the tenant, returned to 
Crawford's house and asked the pioneer to go to 
their relief. Mr. Crawford had severely injured him- 
self with an axe when cutting the path, and was 
lame in consequence, but he nevertheless went to 
their assistance and accompanied them to the top, 
where they had the good fortune to have a splendid 
clear view. The ladies are said to have felt richly 
repaid for the discomfort and hardship entailed in 
a journey under such unfavorable conditions. They 
were out, all told, five days. 

Mr. Crawford built in July, 1823, three small 
stone huts on Mount Washington, but, owing to the 
dampness of the place where they were located, they 
were little used. The ruined walls of one may still 
be seen near the Gulf Tank on the railroad. 

In the spring of 1824, Mr. Crawford built and 
raised a frame, thirty-six by forty feet, the outside of 
which was in the autumn finished and painted. This 

79 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

addition, the interior work on which was completed 
in the winter and spring of 1825, was ready for the 
accommodation of the summer guests of the latter 
year. He thought his house with this enlargement 
would be sufficiently commodious to take care of all 
who would be likely to come, but in a few years, such 
was the increase in the number of visitors, another 
addition was imperatively demanded. Sometimes 
the guests were so numerous that they could be ac- 
commodated for the night only at great inconveni- 
ence to the family. 

After considerable delay and much consideration, 
Mr. Crawford, although he was in debt, and would 
get, by such a step, more involved, finally decided to 
build again; so, having succeeded in getting a loan, 
in the winter and spring of 1832 he bought and drew 
the lumber and other materials for an addition. 
This was raised in May, and before the last of July 
the outside was finished and painted. It was sixty 
feet long and forty feet wide, consisted of two stories, 
and was provided with two verandas, that on the 
Mount Washington side being two-storied and 
extending the entire length of the building. The 
plastering and papering were postponed until the 
next year, in the summer of which the addition was 
first used. 

About this time Mr. Crawford was much an- 
noyed by the encroachment of the new proprietor of 
an establishment for the entertainment of travelers 
which had been erected three quarters of a mile be- 
low his house. This man, who bought the place in 
the autumn of 1831 and took possession of it the 

80 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

following January, acted In such a clandestine man- 
ner toward Mr. Crawford in the matter of acquiring 
and occupying the property, that the latter, who 
was prepared to be neighborly, was much offended. 
Moreover, the rival landlord made use of the moun- 
tain road which Mr. Crawford had constructed at 
great expense of money and labor, and tried by false 
representations to the authorities at Washington 
to have the post-office taken away from Crawford's 
house and transferred to his own. 

This rival hotel, which appears to have been on 
the site of the present White Mountain House, ^ did 
not, however, interfere with Crawford's summer 
business, and for a number of years the sturdy 
pioneer continued to entertain visitors and to con- 
duct individuals or parties up the paths he had 
made. 

At length, seriously involved in pecuniary dif- 
ficulties and broken down in health, Crawford, on 
the advice of some friends and of members of his 
family, decided to give up his farm and to retire to 
a more secluded place, where health might be re- 
gained. Hard as it was for him to leave the spot 
where he had lived twenty years, had worked so 

* The distance, as given in the text, and the additional statement 
of Mr. Crawford, that Mount Washington could not be seen from it 
on account of Mount Deception intervening, point to this conclusion. 
The English traveler Coke speaks of it as displaying a gayly painted 
sign of a lion and an eagle, "looking unutterable things at each other 
from opposite sides of the globe," and as having already attracted 
numerous guests. He declares that the spirit of rivalry had proved of 
some service to Mr. Crawford, as it had "incited him to make con- 
siderable additions to his own house, all of which were run up with 
true American expedition." 

8i 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

hard, and, as he says, "had done everything to 
make the mountain scenery fashionable," and dis- 
tressing as it was to let the property go into the 
possession of others, he bravely accepted his lot, and, 
having made an arrangement with his brother-in- 
law to change situations with him for a time, he 
moved to a farm at Guildhall, Vermont, his birth- 
place. This removal took place in 1837, the year 
which is signalized in White Mountain hotel his- 
tory by the establishment in the landlordship of 
Crawford's old hostelry of the man who was to give 
his name to the railroad center that was to rise at 
this place, — Horace Fabyan, of Portland, of whom 
more will be said later. 

After Crawford had remained on his brother-in- 
law's place ten months, where he raised barely 
enough to support his family, Mr. Howe was com- 
pelled to lease the Crawford farm at the Giant's 
Grave, which was put Into other hands. As he 
wanted his own place at Guildhall to live on, Craw- 
ford again had to move. Fortunately, he was al- 
lowed to take the use of an unoccupied dwelling, 
one mile farther down the Connecticut River, and 
by various arrangements he was permitted to live 
for a number of years on this "beautiful farm," 
which included the site of his grandmother's home 
and the scene of her adventures with the Indians. 

The fifth year a lawyer in Lancaster obtained 
a lease of the place and thereafter Crawford was 
obliged to give him half of what he raised. This 
condition not pleasing him and his family, he deter- 
mined to make a change; so, in 1843, he hired the 

82 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

large three-story dwelling,^ then empty, which was 
in sight of where he had formerly Hved at the Moun- 
tains. There he passed the remainder of his days. 

In spite of his strength and wonderful endurance, 
Crawford was not destined to be long-lived. Worn 
out by the hardships of his early life and by the suf- 
fering caused by bodily ailments and by distress and 
anxiety due to the pecuniary embarrassments of his 
later life, he died prematurely on June 22, 1846, at 
the age of fifty-four.^ He was a man of fine qualities 
— "one of nature's noblemen," says Willey. His 
wife, Lucy Crawford, was a fitting mate for such a 
hardy and brave man. Other members of the Craw- 
ford family were of the same sturdy type. Ethan's 
father, Abel, has already been mentioned. In his 
younger days he sometimes acted as guide to per- 
sons who wished to climb Mount Washington. In 
September, 18 18, he performed this service for John 
Brazer, of Cambridge, and George Dawson, of 
Philadelphia, whose expedition deserves mention 

^ This building, the inn of his unneighborly rival of the early 
thirties, stood on the site of the present White Mountain House, a 
portion of which it still forms. 

^ Both the headstone and the granite shaft in the cemetery give 
his age at death as fifty-two. The Crawford History states, at the 
beginning of chapter ii, that he was born in 1792, and on page 187, 
in giving the family genealogy, Crawford says, "Ethan Allen is my 
name, and I am fifty-three." The shaft of granite was erected in 
memory of Crawford and of his wife, who died February 17, 1869, 
aged seventy-six. Crawford's headstone bears the following interest- 
ing inscription: — "In Memory of Ethan Allen Crawford, who died 
June 22, A.D. 1846; aged 52. 

"He built here the first Hotel at the White Mountains, of which he 
was for many years the owner and Landlord. 

"He was of great native talent & sagacity, of noble, kind, and 
benevolent disposition, a beloved husband and father, and an honest 
& good man." 

83 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

because of the amusing fact that they nailed to 
a rock a brass plate ^ with a Latin inscription en- 
graved on it as a record (of course, calmly prepared 
some time beforehand) of their ascent, the antici- 
pated achievement and arduousness of which were 
evidently realized. 

Another ascent under the guidance of the future 
"Patriarch" is pleasantly narrated by Grenville 
Mellen, the poet and miscellaneous writer, who was 
one of the participants in the excursion. This "pil- 
grimage" was made in August, 1819 (the year of the 
opening of the bridle path) , and was from Portland 
through Fryeburg to the top of Mount Washington 
(the party camped out one night "in a rude-fash- 
ioned camp" part- way up the trail), and over the 
same route in returning. The chronicler portrays his 
guide and host, who, he says, "received us with a 
wintry smile (he never laughed, in the world!) and 
a sort of guttural welcome," in the following some- 
what rhetorical paragraph : — 

Crawford has no compeer. He stands alone; and we 
found him, in all the unapproachableness of his singu- 
larity. We defy Cruikshanks [sic] to hit him; and paint- 
ing and poetry would despair, before such a subject. What 
we shall say, in downright prose, will be mere attempt. 
If you wish to unfold him, and his sons, go and hire him, 
or them, as guides; and let them act themselves out before 
you, on a pilgrimage to Mount Washington. 

It was he, who in 1840, at seventy-five years of 
age, made the first ascent of Mount Washington on 

^ This brass plate remained intact on the summit until July, 1825, 
when it was carried off by some vandals from Jackson. 

84 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

horseback. At eighty, he could, it is said, walk with 
ease five miles, before breakfast, to his son's house. 
He constantly attended the sessions of the New 
Hampshire Legislature, in which he was a repre- 
sentative of his district, when eighty-two years of 
age. A man of great good-humor, it was his pleasure, 
after he was confined to the house, to entertain 
visitors with amusing and interesting anecdotes. 
He died at eighty-five, having survived, it will be 
noted, his son Ethan by several years. His length 
of days is in striking contrast to the latter's short 
life. 

His eight sons were all, it is affirmed, more than 
six feet tall, and Ethan was not alone in his en- 
dowment of unusual physical strength. Thomas J. 
Crawford, already spoken of as a pathbuilder, kept 
from 1829 to 1852 the Notch House, which was 
built in 1828 by Ethan and their father and which 
stood between the present Crawford House and the 
Gate of the Notch, its site being marked to-day by a 
signboard. About 1846 he constructed the carriage 
road up Mount Willard. 

The tragic episode of the destruction of the house- 
hold of Samuel Willey, Jr., in the Crawford Notch 
has been many times narrated — most fully by the 
householder's brother, the Reverend Benjamin G. 
Willey, who devotes two chapters of his " Incidents 
in White Mountain History" to this unhappy event. 
The lonely and awe-inspiring place of the disaster, 
and the fact that the slide caused the greatest loss 
of life of any accident or natural disturbance that 
has occurred in the White Mountain region, and the 

85 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

further fact that an entire household perished, have 
attached a melancholy interest to the event and its 
scene and have drawn to them an amount of atten- 
tion which may seem disproportionate to the im- 
portance of the occurrence. However this may be, 
it is certain that the interest in the sad fate of the 
Willey family has been long-continued and general. 
One evidence which proves the existence of this in- 
terest comes to mind when one thinks of the great 
number of persons who, during all the years that 
have elapsed since the time of the disaster, have 
visited the scene from curiosity.^ 

Further witness to the generality of this interest 
is afforded by recalling the considerable literature 
which has grown up about the story of the catas- 
trophe and which includes, besides numerous re- 
countings of the circumstances, a romance^ based 
in part upon this event and written by an author 
bearing the family name, one of Hawthorne's 
"Twice-Told Tales," and several poems. Haw- 
thorne's allegory, "The Ambitious Guest," is the 
chief literary monument of the Willey disaster. 
Among the poems inspired by it the more notable 
are one by Mrs. Sigourney, the Connecticut poet,^ 
and, particularly, a spirited narrative ballad by Dr. 

^ It was formerly the custom, one which was established early, for 
visitors to add a stone from the material of the slide to a memorial 
pile on the spot where the bodies of a number of the victims were 
found. In process of time this has accumulated into a natural monu- 
ment of considerable size, but of late years it has become hidden be- 
cause of the growth of vegetation about it. 

"^ SoUaire, by George F. Willey. 

' "The White Mountains after the Descent of the Avalanche in 
1826," printed in the Ladies' Magazine (Boston), August, 1828. 

86 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

Thomas W. Parsons, the Dante translator and "the 
Poet" of Longfellow's "Tales of a Wayside Inn." 

The sublimity of the scenery and the tragedy of 
the fate of an entire family made a profound im- 
pression upon travelers who passed that way in the 
score or so of years after the event, and those who 
published accounts of their tours in almost all cases 
devoted a goodly portion of the record of their trip 
to the White Mountains to a narration of the story 
of this sad occurrence. Especially is this true of the 
foreign travelers who traversed the Notch in these 
early days. 

The facts about the terrible storm to which the 
avalanche was immediately due, and those relat- 
ing to the disastrous effects of the heavy rain and of 
the landslide, which were learned or inferred by 
relatives and friends of the destroyed family as the 
result of visits to the scene a few days afterward, 
together with much conjecture as to the circum- 
stances and course of events on the fatal Monday 
night, are set down in great detail by the historian 
brother, who was one of the searchers for the bodies 
of the victims. A few additional particulars may be 
gleaned from the narrative of Crawford and from 
the recollections of contemporaries recorded in the 
newspapers. 

The highway, whose construction through the 
Notch shortly after the discovery of the pass has 
been already chronicled and which connected Upper 
Coos with the seaboard, soon became an important 
route of commerce. After the turnpike was built, 
early in the nineteenth century, long lines of wagons 

87 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

loaded down with merchandise of various descrip- 
tions passed through the gateway both summer and 
winter, and toward the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury pleasure travelers — few in number, to be sure, 
when compared with the later travel of this char- 
acter — had begun to find their way thither, mostly 
in private carriages. This increasing traffic made 
greatly felt the need of public houses as places of 
shelter, particularly in winter, when the northern 
winds are bitterly cold and the road is buried in 
snow, often deeply drifted, and the passage through 
the defile therefore extremely arduous and not a 
little hazardous. From soon after the beginning of 
the last decade of the eighteenth century, there had 
existed on this route simple taverns for the entertain- 
ment of the passing traveler who should be in need 
of a meal, or who, overtaken by night or storm, 
should require a lodging, in the house of the elder 
Crawford near the modern Bemis Station at the 
southern entrance of the Notch and in Eleazar 
Rosebrook's inn (near the present Fabyan House), 
thirteen miles distant from the other. In view of the 
circumstances just mentioned, it is evident that the 
opening of a public house somewhere on the road 
between these two places would be not only an act 
likely to be profitable to the innkeeper, but also one 
partaking of the nature of a benefaction to the 
traveler. Especially was such an establishment in 
the depths of the Notch itself a desideratum in those 
days. 

There is a disagreement in the statements as to 
the time of building of the house which was to be- 

88 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

come famous as the Wllley House. Mr. Spaulding 
says it was erected by a Mr. Davis in 1793, which 
would make its building contemporaneous with 
the settlements of Rosebrook and Crawford. Mr. 
Willey is very indefinite as to the time when the 
house was constructed, his statement being that it 
"had been erected, some years previous to the time 
[1826] of which we write, by a Mr. Henry Hill." ^ 

Be that as it may, this simple story-and-a-half 
dwelling, situated about midway between the two 
houses that have been mentioned, was doubtless a 
timely inn to many a weary teamster or "lated 
traveler" in its early days. The supervention of a 
tragedy was destined, however, to intermit its use as a 
place of shelter and to change the nature of the inter- 
est of visitors in the building and its environment. 

After it had been kept by Mr. Hill and others 
for several years its occupancy was abandoned.^ In 

^ Mr. Crawford says in theHistory, under 1845, "the Notch House, 
which place was settled, Uncle William [i.e., William Rosebrook, then 
seventy-two years old, who lived with the Crawfords] says, about 
fifty -three years ago, by one Mr. Davis, who first began there; since 
which period, others have lived there for a short time, until Samuel 
Willey bought the place, an^ repaired it." The signboard (missing in 
1914) at the site states that the house was built by Davis in 1792, 
was repaired and occupied by Fabyan in 1844, and was burned in 
1898. E. A. Kendall, who passed through the Notch in November, 
1807, speaks of a house, twenty miles from Conway, evidently the 
old Mount Crawford House at Bemis, at which he ate a meal, and 
says that "at a distance of seven miles, there is another house, which 
second house is only three miles short of the Notch," the context 
showing that by the latter he means the Gate of the Notch. 

^ Ethan Allen Crawford engaged the house in the fall of 1823, 
"and agreed to furnish it with such things as are necessary for the 
comfort of travelers and their horses." He records the buying of hay 
at Jefferson in the winter of 1824 and the carrying of it sixteen miles 
to furnish the Notch place. 

89 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the autumn of 1825, after the house had been for 
several months untenanted, Samuel Willey, Jr., a 
son of one ^ of the early settlers of Upper Bartlett, 
moved his family into it. As the house was much 
in need of repairs, he spent the autumn in making 
such as would render it comfortable during the 
winter, and he also enlarged the stable and made 
such other improvements as the time would permit. 
In the spring further improvements were planned 
and begun with the design of making the house more 
worthy of patronage, which had been good during 
the winter and was increasing. 

Nothing unusual occurred during the winter and 
spring to arouse any apprehension as to the unsafe- 
ness of the situation of this lone abode, but one 
rainy afternoon in June Mr. and Mrs. Willey, when 
sitting by a window which looked out upon the 
mountain which now bears their name, saw, as the 
mist cleared up, a mass of earth begin to move, in- 
crease in volume and extent, and finally rush into 
the valley beneath. This was soon followed by an- 
other slide of lesser magnitude. Although these 
avalanches occurred near the house, they did no 
damage to the property, but they served to startle 
the occupants greatly, and Mr. Willey at first pur- 
posed to leave the place and, it is believed, even 
made ready to do so, under the impulse of the first 
panic. His decision against an immediate removal 

^ Samuel Willey, who came to Bartlett from Lee, later moved to 
North Conway and lived on what is known as the "Bigelow Farm" 
until his death, in 1844, when he was more than ninety years of age. 
His son, Benjamin G., the historian, was the second pastor of the 
Congregational Church in Conway. He died in 1867. 

90 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

was largely determined by the counsel of Abel 
Crawford, who with a force of men was at work 
the day of the storm repairing the turnpike near 
by. 

After a short lapse of time, Mr. Willey, who had 
looked about in vain for a safer place in which to 
establish his home, became calmer and his appre- 
hensions of danger were allayed, if not altogether 
removed. Would that he had heeded the warning! 
But he came to think that such an occurrence was 
unlikely to happen again, and so remained, little 
fearing danger and not presaging any evil, to fall a 
victim with all his family two months later. 

The midsummer of 1826 was characterized in the 
White Mountain region by high temperatures and 
a long-continued drought. Under the hot sun the 
soil became dry to an unusual depth and so prepared 
to be acted upon powerfully by any heavy rain. 
The great heat and extreme drought continued un- 
til after the middle of August, when clouds began 
to gather and eventually to gain permanence and 
to give rain, at first but little in quantity. Finally 
on Monday, August 28, came a day of occasional 
showers, which were but a premonition of what was 
to follow, for toward evening the clouds began to 
gather in great volume. They were of dense black- 
ness, which condition combined with their magni- 
tude to make a sublime and awful aspect of the 
heavens. Just at nightfall it began to rain, and then 
ensued a storm which will be ever memorable for 
its violence and its disastrous consequences. Some 
time during this furious downpour, which lasted 

91 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

for several hours, ^ occurred the dreadful avalanche 
which buried the entire household of the little dwell- 
ing in the depths of the Notch. 

The destructiveness of the storm began to be 
evident to the dwellers south of the Notch early 
the next morning when the intervales became so 
flooded that the cattle and horses had to be removed 
from them, and when daylight revealed the desolat- 
ing effects of the copious rains on the summits and 
sides of the mountains. Many trees were seen to be 
destroyed, a vast amount of rocks and earth to be 
displaced, and many grooves and gorges to have 
been created on the slopes. 

At first no fears were felt by the relatives and 
friends of the family in the solitary Notch House as to 
their safety and, indeed, so occupied were they with 
their own immediate concerns because of the floods, 
that they had little time to think of anything else. 
Not until Wednesday night, when unfavorable re- 
ports began to reach the southern settlements, did 
suspicions arise that all was not well with the house- 
hold in the Notch. It seems that the first person to 
pass through the Notch after the storm was a man 
named John Barker. He left Ethan Allen Crawford's 
about four o'clock and reached the Notch House 
about sunset, on Tuesday. Finding it deserted ex- 
cept by the faithful dog,^ he concluded that the 

^ " At eleven o'clock," says Ethan Allen Crawford, " we had a 
clearing-up shower, and it seemed as though the windows of heaven 
were opened and the rain came down almost in streams." 

2 This animal, it is recorded, did what he could to make the dis- 
aster known, for, before any news of it had reached Conway, he 
appeared at the home of Mr. Lovejoy, Mrs. Willey's father, and, 

92 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

family had betaken themselves to Abel Crawford's, 
and he took up his lodging for the night in the va- 
cated house. Evidences of a hasty departure were 
seen in the opened doors, the disarranged beds, the 
scattered clothes, and the Bible lying open on the 
table. When trying to compose himself to sleep he 
heard a low moaning. Unable, because of the dense 
darkness and of having no provision for striking a 
light, to do anything in the way of ascertaining the 
source of this or of rescuing the person or creature 
giving utterance to it, Barker lay terrified and sleep- 
less until dawn, when he arose and, after a search, 
found the cause of his excitement. It was an ox, 
which had been crushed to the floor by the fallen 
timbers of the stable. After releasing the suffering 
animal, Barker proceeded on his way to Bartlett, 
and on arriving at Judge Hall's tavern told about 
the fearful slide at the Willey farm. That night a 
party of men from Bartlett started for the Notch. 
They arrived at their destination toward morning, 
on Thursday, after a difficult journey. As soon as 
day broke they began their search. The confirmed 
reports of the perishing of the family having reached 
the relatives, they too started for the scene of the 
disaster, which they reached about noon of that day. 
Many other people had come as the result of the 
spreading of the news. 

by moanings and other expressions of anguish, tried to tell the mem- 
bers of the family that something dreadful had happened. But not 
succeeding in making himself understood, he left, and, although he 
was afterward frequently seen running at great speed, now up and 
now down the road between the Lovejoy home and the' Notch House, 
he soon disappeared from the region, doubtless perishing through 
grief and loneliness. 

93 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

It was a vast scene of desolation and ruin that 
met the eyes of the searchers as they approached the 
spot. On a clearing perhaps a hundred rods below 
the house, one great slide had deposited its material, 
consisting of large rocks, trees, and sand. The sides 
of the mountain above the house, once green with 
woods, were lacerated and stripped bare for a vast 
extent, while the plain appeared one continuous bed 
of sand and rocks with broken trees and branches in- 
termingled with them. Many separate scars and slide 
deposits were to be seen above and below the house, 
which stood unharmed amid the ruin all about it. 
The avalanche of greatest magnitude, which started 
far up on the mountain-side directly behind the 
house, would have overwhelmed it but for a curious 
circumstance arising from a peculiarity in the con- 
figuration of the ground. It so happened that the 
slide, when it had reached a point not far above the 
little dwelling, had to encounter in its course down 
the mountain a low ridge, or ledge of rock, which 
extended from this place to a more precipitous part 
of the mountain. This, when met, not only some- 
what arrested the slide, but, what was yet more 
remarkable, served to divide it into two parts. One 
portion of the debris flowed to one side, carrying 
away the stable above the house, but avoiding the 
latter building, while the other passed by it on the 
other side. In front of the house the two divisions 
reunited and flowed on in the bed of the Saco. This 
strange circumstance in the action of the landslide, 
with its even more singular results, the sparing of the 
house and the destruction of its inmates, — for it 

94 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

was doubtless this particular convulsion that was the 
occasion of the latter event, — lends to the story of 
the disaster, when one thinks of the perversity of 
fate in this instance and of what might have been, 
a peculiar pathos. 

Just how the members of the household met their 
deaths will never be known. Whether, on hearing 
the frightful noise which must have accompanied 
the avalanche and have heralded its coming, they 
fled precipitately before It from the house and were 
overwhelmed by It when it reached the low ground, 
or whether they had already, for fear of being 
drowned by the rising waters above the habitation, 
betaken themselves to the foot of the mountain be- 
fore the slide came down and there had been caught 
In its course and carried away with It, we cannot tell. 
However it may be, these alternative suppositions, 
at any rate, embody the principal theories that have 
been advanced as to the probable course of events, 
but. It must be admitted, they both rest upon in- 
ference and, largely, upon conjecture. 

Such search^ as had been made for the bodies up 
to noon on Thursday had been unavailing. Not 
long after, however, a man who was searching along 
the slide just below the house happened, through the 
accidental moving of a twig, to notice a number of 
flies about the entrance to a sort of cave formed by 

^ Among the searchers was Ethan Allen Crawford, who had been 
sent for by the friends of the Willey family. He tells of nailing to a 
dead tree, near the place where the bodies were found, a planed board 
on which he had written with a piece of red chalk, "The family found 
here," which " monument " was afterward taken away by some of the 
later occupants of the house and used for fuel. 

95 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

material of the slide, and as the result of a search 
which was immediately instituted about this spot 
the location of one of the bodies was disclosed. This 
body proved to be that of David Allen, one of the 
farmhands. Not long after, the eager searchers came 
upon the body of Mrs. Willey, even more terribly 
mangled than that of the farmhand. Further search 
soon revealed the body of Mr. Willey, not far away. 
These were all that were found that day, and, as it 
was decided to bury them near their habitation 
until they could be more conveniently moved to 
Conway the next winter, coffins were made of such 
materials as could be obtained there, and the bodies, 
after prayer by a Bartlett minister, were buried in a 
common grave. 

Search was continued on the next day, and during 
its course the body of the youngest child was found 
and buried. On Saturday^ the body of the eldest 
child, a girl of twelve years, and that of the other 
hired man, David Nickerson, were recovered and 
buried. The bodies of the three other children have 
never been found. They were covered so deeply be- 
neath the sand and rocks that no search has ever 
been able to discover them. In view of the magni- 
tude and extent of the avalanche and the quantity 
of materials deposited upon the valley, it is more 
remarkable that so many bodies were recovered 
than that these were not found. 

The only living things about the premises to 

^ Mr. Crawford says Nickerson's body was recovered on Saturday 
and that of the eldest daughter on Sunday, the latter being found 
some distance from where the others were and across the river, she 
apparently having met death by drowning. 

96 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

escape were the dog and two oxen. These latter were 
endangered by falling timbers, but suffered no seri- 
ous injury. Two horses were, however, crushed to 
death by timbers of the stable. 

The foregoing narrative embodies the main facts 
of this melancholy event. The story of the storm 
which was the proximate cause of the landslide would 
not, however, be complete without some mention 
of the disastrous work of this terrific downpour, not 
only in the region in the vicinity of the Willey 
House, but elsewhere, for it did great damage in 
other parts of the Mountains also. 

The road through the Crawford Notch was in 
many places destroyed. All the bridges but two 
along the entire length of the turnpike, a distance of 
seventeen miles, were carried away. The directors, 
seeing it would take a great sum to repair the road, 
voted, after the good people of Portland had con- 
tributed fifteen hundred dollars to help and en- 
courage them, to levy an assessment upon the shares. 
These sums, with some other assistance, provided 
means for accomplishing the work, which is said to 
have been carried on by the hardy natives by moon- 
light as well as in the daytime. 

The storm utterly destroyed the road through the 
Franconia Notch also, and travel had to be sus- 
pended until after repairs were made by means of a 
state appropriation of thirteen hundred dollars. 

The best part of Abel Crawford's farm was de- 
stroyed, A new sawmill, which had just been built 
by Crawford, who was away from home at the time 
of the flood, was swept away, together with a great 

97 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

number of logs and boards and all the fences on the 
intervale. Twenty-eight sheep were drowned and a 
great deal of standing grain was ruined. The water 
rose so high as to run through the entire house on the 
lower floors and sweep out the coals and ashes from 
the fireplace. Many other dwellers on the banks of 
the Saco and its tributaries suffered more or less 
damage. 

At Ethan Crawford's on the Ammonoosuc much 
injury to property and live stock was occasioned by 
the flood. The whole intervale in the vicinity of the 
Giant's Grave was covered with water for a space of 
more than two hundred acres. The road was greatly 
damaged and in some places entirely demolished. 
The bridge was carried away, taking with it in its 
course down the river ninety feet of shed which had 
been attached to the barn that escaped the fire of 
1818. Fourteen sheep were drowned and a large 
field of oats was destroyed. The flood came within 
a foot and a half of the door of the house, a strong 
stream ran between the house and the stable, and 
much wood was swept away. Mr. Crawford's camp 
at the foot of the mountain, with all its furnishings, 
which were enclosed in a sheet-iron chest, was car- 
ried away by the rising water. No part of the iron 
chest, or of its contents, which included eleven 
blankets and a supply of cooking-utensils, was ever 
found, except a few pieces of blanket that were 
caught on bushes at different places down the river. 

An incident relating to a party of travelers, which 
occurred at the time of the storm, may well be nar- 
rated here. On the 26th of August, some gentlemen 

98 



FIRST SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS 

from the West arrived at Crawford's for the pur- 
pose of ascending Mount Washington. Crawford, 
as the weather was threatening, advised them not 
to go that afternoon, but as their time was limited 
they said they must proceed, and so he guided them 
to the camp, where they arrived at ten o'clock at 
night. Early the next morning it began to rain, 
which took away all hope of ascending the mountain 
that day. Reluctant to abandon their excursion, 
now that they were so near the goal, it was decided 
that Crawford should go to his home for more pro- 
visions and return to the camp. Crawford arrived 
home tired from a slow and wearisome journey 
through the rain and mud. His brother Thomas, 
who happened to be at the house, cheerfully con- 
sented to take his place. When the latter arrived at 
the camp, he found that the rain had put out the 
fire and that the party were holding a council as to 
what was to be done. He told them that it would be 
very unpleasant, if not dangerous, to remain where 
they were, and that by rapid traveling it might be 
possible to reach the house. By fast walking, by 
wading, and by crossing the swollen streams on 
trees cut down and laid across to serve as bridges, 
they managed to reach the house safely about eight 
o'clock in the evening. Fortunately, they reached 
the bridge over the Ammonoosuc just in time to 
pass over it before it was swept away. Had they re- 
mained, they would have shared the same fate as 
the Willey family, or, at least, have suffered greatly 
from cold, hunger, and exposure. On the following 
Wednesday, the water having by that time suf- 

99 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ficlently subsided to permit the fording of the Am- 
monoosuc, with Thomas Crawford for guide, some 
of the party, with the addition of another small 
party from the West, achieved the ascent of the 
mountain, although they had much difficulty in 
finding their way owing to the destructive effect of 
the rain on the path. 

Farther down the Ammonoosuc, at Rosebrook's, 
and elsewhere in the valley, much damage was done, 
although conditions were not so bad as at Crawford's. 
Many other slides, also, besides the one at the 
Willey House, devastated great areas on the slopes 
of the Mountains, notably a very extensive one on 
the west side of Mount Pleasant. 

Such, then, were some of the effects of this most 
remarkable storm in White Mountain history, which 
will be ever memorable for its destruction of prop- 
erty and human life. 

The disaster at the Willey House did not deter 
others from occupying it, for, somewhat more than 
a year after, a man named Pendexter moved into it 
with the object chiefly of affording entertainment 
for travelers during the winter. Some time after his 
removal a storm, not so severe as that of 1826, but 
yet a very heavy one, took place. The impressive 
circumstances of this terrific storm of thunder, 
lightning, and rain, together with the remembrance 
of what had occurred there, so affected the family 
then residing there, that, it is said, not a word was 
spoken for nearly half an hour. 



V 

FURTHER DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS — 

SOME NOTED AMERICAN VISITORS OF THE 

EARLY DAYS 

Whether or no the natural curiosity commonly 
called the "Old Man of the Mountain," or the 
"Profile," was known to the Indians cannot be de- 
termined with certainty; the tradition that it was 
worshiped by them, at any rate, is very doubtful, 
as they appear to have left us no legend concerning 
it. The story of the discovery of this the cardinal 
wonder of the New Hampshire highlands, and un- 
doubtedly the most remarkable freak of nature of its 
kind in the world, is a prosaic one enough. According 
to Sweetser, the discovery was made in 1805 by 
Francis Whitcomb and Luke Brooks, two men who 
were working on the Notch Road, and who, hap- 
pening to go to Profile Lake (then known as Fer- 
rin's Pond) to wash their hands, were by this chance 
the first white men to behold the face. 

Instead of exhibiting the nation-wide tendency to 
find in any such natural formation a fancied re- 
semblance to the profile of the Father of his Coun- 
try, one or other of them exclaimed, it is said, and 
perhaps thereby revealed his political affiliations, 
"That is Jefferson" (he was then President). 

The late W. C. Prime, long a summer resident of 
the Franconia region, and, when occupying his cabin 

lOI 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

on Lonesome Lake,^ a near neighbor, so to speak, 
of the Old Man, gives a different version of the find- 
ing. His account of it, which is based upon "Fran- 
conia tradition, tolerably well verified by my own 
investigations among old residents," bestows the 
honor of being the first white beholder of the Profile 
upon a Baptist clergyman from Lisbon, who, having 
occasion to see one of the men working on the new 
road, and having driven for this purpose up to this 
part of the Notch, happened, while talking to the 
man, to glance up through the trees in such a line 
of vision that he saw the face outlined against the 
sky. Exclaiming, " Look there!" he directed the at- 
tention of the men, who had been cutting out bushes 
on the knoll by the lake, to the startling object. 

Mr. Justus Conrad has this to say of the matter 
in question in the Granite Monthly for July, 1897: — 

It is claimed by some writers that the Old Man of the 
Mountain and the Flume were discovered in 1805, but 
these wonders were no doubt known to some long before 
this. The region was a favorite haunt of the red men, and 
it is stated, on reasonable authority, that the friends of 
Stark made the first discovery while searching for him 
after his capture by the Indians. 

However this may be as to the finding of the Pro- 
file, it may be adduced in opposition to the view just 

^ This picturesque tarn is situated on the ridge, and under one of 
the high bluffs, of Mount Cannon, and is about one thousand feet 
above the road. The lake and the adjoining territory were for some 
years the property of this well-known New York journalist, author, 
and angler and his friend, W. F, Bridge. Here they used to stay for 
longer or shorter periods and to entertain their friends in their quaint 
woodland cottage on the shore of the lake. General McClellan spent 
many happy days in this secluded spot. 

102 




THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

put forward so far as it relates to the other Franconia 
curiosity, that, inasmuch as the Flume is situated off 
the main trail or road, it is not likely that it would be 
come upon by those passing through the Notch hur- 
riedly. It seems more probable that its discovery 
came about in the manner that is related a little 
farther on. 

The existence of the Profile was first made known 
to the world at large by General Martin Field, who, 
after visiting it in 1827, sent a brief description of it 
to Professor Silliman, editor of the American Journal 
of Science and Arts, who published the letter in the 
Journal for July, 1828, together with an engraving 
in which the figure is so curiously exaggerated as to 
be grotesque. 

It remained, however, for Hawthorne to give the 
Profile literary immortality, which he did, by cele- 
brating it in one of his most beautiful allegorical 
tales, "The Great Stone Face," It is introduced 
also into a later story. Professor Edward Roth's 
pleasing legendary tale of "Christus Judex." The 
theme of this is the search of an Italian painter, 
Casola, for a suitable model for the face of a figure of 
Christ sitting in judgment, which he had resolved to 
paint for the altar-piece of the church in his native 
town.^ 

* As the little book is probably known to but few, perhaps a brief 
summary of the story may be given here. Having failed, after much 
seeking, to find a satisfactory countenance or representation of one 
in the Old World, Casola is much discouraged until he hears from his 
mother that a dying missionary has told her of having seen a face in 
the wilderness of America such as might belong to a judging Christ. 
Acting upon this report, the painter immediately crosses the sea and 
has himself conducted to the region in the land of the Abnakis where 

103 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Such is the fame of the Profile, that almost un- 
canny counterfeit presentment carved by Nature's 
hand, that perhaps a brief digression from the his- 
torical to the descriptive may be pardoned by the 
reader. This illusion, for, as Dr. Prime points out, 
"there is no rock-hewn face there," and "the profile, 
therefore, exists only in the eyes that see it," is pro- 
duced by the accidental position of the edges and 
various projecting points of three disconnected 
ledges, which have different vertical axes and which 
form severally the forehead, the nose and upper lip, 
and the chin. These surfaces and projections form 
the outline of a profile when viewed in combination 
from a certain direction; but when the beholder 
moves a short distance from the proper line of vision 
the appearance vanishes and he finds himself looking 
only at a rough, jagged cliff. 

Not content with the production of this startling 
optical effect, which alone would be a sufficient 
appeal to the vision of any traveler. Nature has 
lavishly provided a strikingly beautiful situation and 
most picturesque surroundings as a setting for this 
marvel. The combination of ledges which forms the 
material of this illusion is set on the southeast end of 
the long majestic ridge of Mount Cannon, or Profile, 
at an altitude of twelve hundred feet above Profile 
Lake, a sheet of water, "than which," to quote Dr. 
Prime again, "there is nowhere on earth one more 

the missionary had labored. Having arrived there, he finds, among the 
converted Indians of a village on the Kennebec, some who guide him 
to the region of lofty mountains to the westward, where he at length 
attains the object of his search and finds in the Profile the fulfillment 
of his conception of ideal grandeur. 

104 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

beautiful." From the base of the projection forming 
the chin to the top of that forming the forehead the 
vertical distance is from thirty-six to forty feet.^ 

A word or two as to the permanency of the material 
of this marvelous visual effect. Professor Hitchcock's 
fear, expressed more than forty years ago, that, owing 
to the friability of the granite of which the ledges are 
composed and its consequent rapid disintegration, 
the ledges might soon disappear, has so far not been 
realized. Myriads of travelers have gazed with ad- 
miration and awe upon that stern and somewhat 
melancholy visage looking imperturbably down the 
valley from its lofty situation, and myriads of per- 
sons who have not visited the spot have been made 
familiar with the appearance of the Old Man 
through pictures or other representations. Sad will 
be the day (may it never come !) when that marvel of 
Nature shall be marred or be no longer to be seen. 

Regarding the discovery of the other great natural 
curiosity of the Franconia Notch, the Flume, there 
is little to tell. Indeed, beyond the bare statement 
that it was made at about the same time as that 
of the Profile, and by Mrs. Jessie Guernsey,^ wife of 

1 According to the State Survey of 187 1, when the measurement 
was made by young men from Dartmouth College, attached to the 
survey party. 

2 The name was evidently in early days pronounced in the English 
fashion, for it was sometimes spelled "Garnsey." Harry Hibbard's 
long poem "Franconia Mountain Notch," first published in 1839, 
contains the following stanza on the Flume: — 

"And, farther down, from Garnsey's lone abode, 
By a rude footpath climb the mountain-side. 
Leaving below the traveler's winding road. 
To where the cleft hill yawns abrupt and wide. 
As though some earthquake did its mass divide, 

105 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the pioneer settler of this locality, while fishing along 
the brook, information appears to be lacking. 

Perhaps the earliest printed description of the 
Franconia Notch appeared in the New Hampshire 
Statesman and Concord Register of September 9 and 
16, 1826. It contained an account of an ascent of 
Mount Lafayette, which received its present name, ^ 
probably during the great Frenchman's stay in the 
United States, in 1824-25. Another early ascent of 
this noble peak was accomplished by Forrest Shep- 
ard, a Mr. Sparhawk, of Dartmouth College, and a 
guide, on the 7th of August, 1826. Mr. Shepard sent 
an account of his trip to Professor Silliman, which was 
printed in the American Journal of Science and Arts 
for June, 1827. 

The summit was reached at 1 1 a.m. after a "rugged 
ascent" of several hours. The climbers were envel- 
oped in passing clouds while on the mountain, ob- 
taining only glimpses of the country below and 
around them, during occasional momentary break- 
ings away. In the late afternoon, while there was a 
thunderstorm below them, they were enfolded in a 
slight mist, through which the sun suddenly burst, 
causing to their "astonishment and delight" a pe- 
culiar meteorological phenomenon. As it was de- 
scribed by Mr. Shepard, their shadows were seen 

In olden time; there view the rocky Flume, 

Tremendous chasm! rising side by side, 

The rocks abrupt wall in the long, high room. 

Echoing the wild stream's roar, and dark with vapory gloom." 

The Guernsey farm is located about one mile south of the Flume 
House, and is still occupied by persons of that name. 

1 President Dwight proposed to call it Mount Wentworth. In Car- 
rigain's map of 1816, it was called the Great Haystack. 

106 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

reposing upon the bosom of the cloud, while around 
each of their shadow heads was an entire rainbow, 
which persisted for twelve or fifteen minutes. 

A great portion of the "Crawford History" is 
devoted to accounts of the individuals or parties 
Ethan Allen Crawford entertained in his home and 
tavern and of the excursions made by them, under 
his piloting, through the Mountains, up Mount 
Washington, or over the Range. Among these early 
travelers to the region were a number of noted 
men, of whose visits Mr. Crawford gives interesting 
and entertaining reminiscences or anecdotes, drawn 
from his recollection or taken from entries which 
they made in his "album." 

One of the earliest of such visitors was Chancellor 
James Kent, of New York, who came to the Craw- 
ford inn in the summer of 1823, accompanied by 
two young men. The famous jurist ^ wished to pass 
through the Notch, and as the stage did not then 
run on that route, he put up at Crawford's for the 
night, and arranged to secure a conveyance from 
the proprietor to carry his party to Conway. In the 
morning Crawford harnessed his two mares to a 
wagon and the journey was made that day. "While 

^ Chancellor Kent had just retired from his office on account of 
having reached the age (sixty years) which was then the age limit for 
the chancellorship, and was taking a pleasure tour through the 
"Eastern States." One of his young companions was his son, Wil- 
liam, then twenty-one, afterwards Judge of the Supreme Court of 
New York and Professor of Law in Harvard University. Some books 
state that Chancellor Kent ascended Mount Washington, but there 
is nothing in the Crawford History to that effect. His age and the fact 
that at that early date the mountain could be ascended only on foot 
would seem to render it unlikely that he made such an arduous 
trip. 

107 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

on the way," says the pioneer, "we had an interest- 
ing time in exchanging jokes, etc." 

Crawford tells, under the date of 1825, of accom- 
panying a botanist, who was making a collection 
of plants of the White Mountains, in some of his 
tours, which occupied several weeks. This must 
have been Oakes, whose visits have been already 
mentioned. 

In 1829 came another botanical explorer, Dr. 
J. W. Robbins, who traversed the entire Range, de- 
scending into and crossing the Great Gulf and visit- 
ing all the eastern summits for the first time for 
scientific purposes. The plants of the southeastern 
ridge had been collected by Benjamin D. Greene in 
1823, and Henry Little, a medical student, aLso ex- 
plored this part of the Mountains in that same 
year. About this time, also, the naturalist Nuttall 
botanized here and detected several species of 
plants, some of such rarity, it is said, that they have 
hardly been seen since. 

Professor Benjamin Silliman, the noted scientist, 
made at least two excursions to the White Moun- 
tains. He visited them for the first time in May, 
1828, and from memoranda taken from letters to 
his family and printed in the American Journal of 
Science and Arts for January, 1829, we learn that 
he went from Concord to Center Harbor, ascending 
Red Hill, and then on to Conway. On Monday, the 
19th, on which day he rode through the Notch, he 
writes, "We . . . have this day passed the grandest 
scenes that I have any where seen. The whole day's 
ride, in an open wagon, has been in the winding defile 

108 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

of mountains, which probably have not their equal 
in North America, until we reach the Rocky Moun- 
tains." He describes the Notch and narrates briefly 
the Willey disaster, the scene of which he visited 
again the next day, examining the scenery, the 
geological phenomena, and the ruins. His letter of 
that day gives further details of the catastrophe and 
describes the slides and their effects. 

Professor Silliman's second expedition to the 
Mountains was made in August and September, 
1837, and is recorded in the Journal for April, 1838. 
On the first day of September, 1837, in company 
with his son and two gentlemen of Boston, he as- 
cended Mount Washington under severe weather 
conditions, which rendered the trip "very ardu- 
ous." They became involved in a cloud, which froze 
on their clothing and "tufted the rocks with splen- 
did crystallizations of ice." The path was slippery 
with ice, and above the tree-line the wind blew "a 
frozen gale." As there were occasional outbursts of 
the sun, they persevered and reached the summit, 
where, however, the wind blew so furiously that 
"the strongest man could not keep his standing 
without holding fast by the rocks," and only a few 
minutes at a time could be given to the peak on 
account of the severity of the cold and the violent 
pelting of the storm. " For science," he says, "there 
w^as little to survey." He notes that the descent, 
although, of course, more rapid than the ascent and 
much less fatiguing to the lungs, was very trying to 
the limbs, and especially to the larger muscles and to 
the patella, "which seemed as if it would part with 

109 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the strain." The pedestrian ascent occupied two and 
a half hours; the entire journey about ten hours "of 
strenuous and constant exertion." 

Besides the elder President Dwight, accounts of 
whose journeys to the Mountains have been given 
in the preceding chapter, another member of that 
noted family has by his writings pleasantly asso- 
ciated his name with the region. This is President 
Dwight's nephew and pupil, Theodore Dwight, Jr., 
who, forced to abandon his theological studies be- 
cause of ill health, became a traveler and later a 
metropolitan magazine editor, publisher, and phil- 
anthropist, and who was the author of numerous 
works, including several volumes of travel. 

About 1825,^ he made a horseback journey 
through New England, going up the Connecticut as 
far as the mouth of its tributary, the Ammonoosuc, 
following the latter up to the White Mountains, and 
thence passing through the Crawford Notch and 
continuing on to Boston. 

The literary fruits of this tour were several. His 
"Sketches of Scenery and Manners in the United 
States" (1829), has a chapter ^ on "The White 
Mountains," in which he gives extensive descrip- 
tions of the scenery, an account of the Willey disaster 

^ I have been unable to ascertain the date of this trip. In his 
Northern Traveller, in speaking of a quarry near Concord, he notes the 
removal of a very large piece of rock in 1824, which he may have seen 
at the time. He also refers to the Notch House (Willey House) as 
being unoccupied in summer. Mr. Willey moved into the house in the 
autumn of 1825. 

2 The book contains two rude lithographic prints, one a view of the 
Notch and the other showing the effects of the slides. They are simi- 
lar to those in his later book, Things as They Are. 

1 10 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

with reflections upon it, a description of the house, 
and a long quotation having to do with the descrip- 
tion of a storm experienced by a traveler through 
the Notch who took shelter from the elements in the 
solitary dwelling when it stood untenanted previous 
to the advent of the Willeys. 

Again, in the later editions^ of his guide-book, 
"The Northern Traveller," he includes directions 
for traveling through the Mountains, a brief ac- 
count of the destruction of the household of Mr. 
Calvin [sic] Willey, and various bits of information, 
particularly about the first road and the turnpike 
through the Notch. 

The detailed relation of his trip to the highland 
country of northern New Hampshire was, however, 
reserved for his entertaining volume of travels in the 
North and East, which was published anonymously 
in 1834 under the title, "Things as They Are; or, 
Notes of a Traveller through Some of the Middle 
and Northern States." ^ He writes pleasantly of the 
incidents of the journey and of the people he encoun- 
tered, and was much impressed with the wildness 
and the sublimity of the scenery up the valley of 
the Ammonoosuc and through the Notch. Finding a 

^ In the first edition (1825) there are a number of pages in the 
appendix devoted to the White Mountains. The later editions con- 
tain an interesting cut of the Notch (Willey) House, engraved by 
O. H. Throop, 172 Broadway, New York. 

2 The second edition was published in 1847 with the author's name 
on the title-page and under the title, Summer Tours; or, Notes of a 
Traveller through Some of the Middle and Northern States. The book 
contains crude wood-cuts of the "Notch of the WTiite Hills, from the 
North" (lower frontispiece) and of " One of the White Hills, stripped 
of forest and soil by the storm of 1826." 

Ill 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

party of travelers assembled at Crawford's who had 
arranged to make an ascent of Mount Washington, 
he stopped there long enough to join them in this 
undertaking, which he found to be "a very labori- 
ous task." It was accomplished, however, without 
mishap under the guidance of Mr. Crawford, who 
pointed out the objects of interest, such as Lake 
Winnepesaukee and the Androscoggin, during the 
occasional intervals of an unfavorable day, when the 
clouds for a short time broke away. The entire trip 
he declares was a great delight to him. He concludes 
with noting his thorough appreciation of the pleas- 
ure and value of the physical exertion necessary for 
the climb and with some reflections, suggested by 
the agreeableness of the experience, as to the tend- 
ency of the town dweller to indolent habits and 
luxury. 

The summer of 1831 was marked by the coming 
of many visitors, chief among whom was one of the 
most noted of men to come to the Mountains, New 
Hampshire's most famous son, "a member of Con- 
gress, Daniel Webster." He arrived at Crawford's 
on a warm day in June and asked the landlord to go 
up the mountain with him. The ascent was made 
"without meeting anything worthy of note, more 
than was common for me to find," says the guide, 
but "things appeared interesting" to the statesman, 
we are told. On their arrival at the summit, Webster 
is reported to have made a brief address, as follows: 
"Mount Washington, I have come a long distance, 
have toiled hard to arrive at your summit, and now 
you seem to give me a cold reception, for which I am 

112 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

extremely sorry, as I shall not have time enough to 
view this grand prospect which now lies before me, 
and nothing prevents but the uncomfortable atmos- 
phere in which you reside!" As they began to de- 
scend, there was a snowstorm on the top, the snow 
freezing on them and causing them to suffer with the 
cold until they had got some distance down. They 
returned safely, however, to the hostelry, where Mr. 
Webster rejoined his women friends, whom he had 
left there while he made the ascent. On leaving, the 
next day, the statesman, after paying his bill, gener- 
ously gave his host and guide a gratuity of twenty 
dollars. In honor of this famous son of the Granite 
State, his name has been given to the grand moun- 
tain ^ at the southern end of the Presidential Range, 
where the chain falls off sharply into the Notch, a 
peak which is, as Mr. Oakes has declared, "among 
the most unique and magnificent objects of the 
White Mountains." 

The literary associations of the great New Eng- 
land romancer with the White Hills have been 
touched upon incidentally in sundry places in this 
chronicle. So important, indeed, not only in this 
respect but biographically and psychologically, is 
his connection with them — they played so impor- 
tant a part in his life — that the record of it demands 

^ Professor C. H. Hitchcock states that it is probable that the name 
of Mount Webster was proposed by Mr. Sidney Willard (after whom, 
he says, Mount Willard is named) for the peak known to earlier 
visitors as Notch Mountain. It is sometimes stated that Mount 
Willard was named by Thomas J. Crawford after Mr. Joseph Willard, 
once clerk of the Superior Court in Boston, who had ascended the 
mountain with Crawford. 

113 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

and deserves special and detailed treatment. Haw- 
thorne's physical contact with the region, like that 
of his college classmate Longfellow, was limited, the 
parallel even extending probably to the number of 
visits and to their being made in early and in late 
life only. The character of the visits of the two men 
were, however, very different. Hawthorne's early 
one was a brief but comprehensive expedition 
through the heart of the region, while Longfellow 
seems to have penetrated no farther than Conway 
in his early days. Hawthorne's later journey thither 
came at the very end of his life and was cut short 
almost before it had begun, death overtaking the 
weary traveler at the gateway town of Plymouth. 

Furthermore, unlike Longfellow, Hawthorne owed 
much to the White Mountains. They were one of the 
formative influences of his boyhood, much of which 
was passed in a wilderness home at Raymond, Maine, 
on the shore of Sebago Lake, where the imaginative 
boy could see, far away on the northwestern horizon, 
the peaks and slopes of the Mountains, "purple- 
blue with the distance and vast," or, much of the 
time, glitteringly white in their covering of snow. 

The first decade after Hawthorne's graduation 
from Bowdoin in 1825 was a dismal period in his 
career. He returned to Salem and formed several 
plans of life. Authorship was, to be sure, the career 
that appealed to him and that Nature intended him 
to pursue, but it then offered little chance of a liveli- 
hood. So strong, however, was his desire to follow 
his bent for literature, that he determined to be, in 
any case, a writer of fiction, a resolve which he held 

114 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

to in the face of the most discouraging obstacles. 
After the failure of "Fanshawe," he became utterly 
disheartened, and, despairing of success as an author, 
became almost a hermit. But he kept on writing, re- 
turning to his original plan of writing short stories, 
in which he was eventually to meet with success. 

Once a year or thereabouts while he was living this 
solitary life in his mother's house, he used to make an 
excursion of a few weeks, in which, he says, "I en- 
joyed as much of life as other people do in the whole 
year's round." It is one of these expeditions, that of 
the autumn of 1832, that is of present interest for 
us. It had a profound result upon the despondent 
author and bore rich literary fruit. This excursion, 
which was to the White Mountains, Lake Cham- 
plain, Lake Ontario, and Niagara Falls, had the 
psychological effect of raising his spirits and of stim- 
ulating his ambition, and provided him with the 
materials for a number of plots for short stories. 
So far as the White Mountains are concerned the 
record of his doings there is a strikingly brief one. 
Writing to his mother from Burlington, Vermont, on 
September 16, he says: "I have arrived in safety, 
having passed through the White Hills, stopping 
at Ethan Crawford's house and climbing Mount 
Washington." On this same journey he doubtless 
visited the Franconia Notch and saw that marvelous 
countenance he was to immortalize in literature, but 
there is no record of the fact. Nor do we hear of 
other expeditions to the Mountains, although it is 
possible they were made. From such a limited ac- 
quaintance with the region as this fleeting glimpse 

115 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

of it afforded, what remarkable fruit was genius able 
to produce! 

The passage of the White Mountain Notch and 
the defile itself were described in a sketch printed in 
the New England Magazine for November, 1835. The 
sight of the devastation wrought by the slides in the 
Notch and the story of the Willey disaster of six 
years before his visit suggested to his fertile imagina- 
tion the theme for his allegorical tale of ''The Am- 
bitious Guest." His stay at Crawford's is vividly 
described in the sketch, "Our Evening Party among 
the Mountains." On that evening he heard the 
legend of "The Great Carbuncle" told, which he 
expanded into the beautiful tale of this title. 

It was in 1840 that the idea of a story in which a 
human countenance gradually assumes the aspect of 
a semblance of the face formed of rock, and becomes 
at length a perfect likeness of it, presented itself to 
the mind of Hawthorne and was jotted down in his 
notebooks. Some years after this germ developed 
about the Franconia Profile and bore fruit in the 
allegorical tale of "The Great Stone Face," in which 
various persons, a man of wealth, a military man, a 
statesman (Hawthorne is supposed to have had 
Daniel Webster in mind when portraying this char- 
acter), and a great poet, are successively acclaimed, 
but mistakenly, as fulfilling the prophecy that a 
child should be born in the valley who should become 
the greatest and noblest person of his time and 
whose countenance should in manhood be a per- 
fect likeness of the Great Stone Face. The poet, 
when he comes, finds the true person in a humble 

116 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

dweller in the valley, Ernest, a wise and simple man, 
beloved by all, and when approaching old age bearing 
a striking resemblance to the natural phenomenon. 

Written in Salem in 1848, "The Great Stone Face " 
was submitted to Whittier, then editor of The Na- 
tional Era, and was accepted for that journal and 
published January 24, 1850, the author receiving 
twenty-five dollars for this product of his imagina- 
tion. Thus ended Hawthorne's literary connection 
with the White Mountains. 

For two or three years before his death, Haw- 
thorne's health had been gradually failing from some 
mysterious malady, which sapped his physical 
strength and brain-power until he could work no 
more. Several journeys were taken in the hope that 
a change of climate and scene would restore his 
vitality and spirits, but although they had a bene- 
ficial effect upon him the improvement was only 
temporary. After the sudden death in April, 1864, of 
Hawthorne's publisher and intimate friend, William 
Davis Ticknor, almost at the outset of a southward 
journey they were taking together for their health, 
Hawthorne returned to his home a complete wreck. 

At this juncture his college mate and lifelong 
friend, ex- President Franklin Pierce, came at once to 
Concord to offer his services in Hawthorne's behalf. 
He could suggest, however, nothing more hopeful 
than a journey to the highlands of New Hampshire, 
his thought being that the mountain air might re- 
invigorate the invalid. They had to wait several 
weeks for settled weather, but at length on Thurs- 
day, May 12, 1864, they started from Boston going 

117 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

by rail to Concord, New Hampshire, which they 
reached in the evening. The weather being un- 
favorable and Hawthorne feeble, they remained 
there until the following Monday, when they 
started on. Traveling by easy stages in a carriage, 
they reached Plymouth on Wednesday evening, the 
1 8th, about six o'clock. 

Seeing that Hawthorne was becoming very help- 
less. General Pierce decided not to pursue their 
journey farther and thought of sending the next 
day for Mrs. Hawthorne and Una to join them there. 
But alas ! there was to be no next day for Hawthorne. 
Some time in the night, in Room No. 9 in the Pemi- 
gewasset House, the novelist passed quietly away, 
so quietly indeed that his death was not discovered 
by his friend until several hours afterward. 

The connection of another great New England 
author, Emerson, with this region appears to have 
been limited to one visit, so far as I have been able 
to ascertain. This sojourn is well worthy of record, 
however, because made at a crisis in his career, at 
the time, indeed, when the young minister of the 
Second Church of Boston had just made known to 
his people his repugnance to the Communion rite 
and had proposed its modification. The matter hav- 
ing been referred to a committee for consideration, 
the troubled clergyman, meanwhile, betook him- 
self, during a suspension of the church services while 
some repairs were being made, to the Mountains to 
ponder his course of action and to get spiritual re- 
freshment. 

This was in July, 1832, when he was twenty-nine 

118 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

years old, the same year, by the way, in which his 
future fellow townsman, Hawthorne, made the trip 
through the Mountains which was so important 
an incident in his career, but from a very different 
standpoint. On the 6th, Emerson has an entry in 
his Journal, dated at Conway, in which he sets down 
the question, ''What is the message that is given me 
to communicate next Sunday?" So it is probable 
that he preached by invitation in the village church. 

The end of the following week found him at Ethan 
Allen Crawford's, where he remained over Sunday. 
The entry in the Journal for Saturday contains a 
statement which gives his idea of the benefit to be 
derived by withdrawing to the hills. It has an ironi- 
cal touch for us when we make a mental comparison 
of the primitive conditions of this particular locality 
in that day with the busy activity and luxury which 
characterize it to-day. 

"The good of going to the mountains," he de- 
clares, "is that life is reconsidered ; it is far from the 
slavery of your own modes of living, and you have 
opportunity of viewing the town at such a distance 
as may afford you a just view, nor can you have any 
such mistaken apprehension as might be expected 
from the place you occupy and the round of customs 
you run at home." 

Sunday in this environment without the outward 
accompaniments of religion was evidently dull and 
without pleasure for the sensitive soul of the philoso- 
pher, for he writes on this day, "A few low moun- 
tains, a great many clouds always covering the great 
peaks, a circle of woods to the horizon, a peacock on 

119 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the fence or in the yard, and two travellers no bet- 
ter contented than myself in the plain parlour of 
this house make up the whole picture of this un- 
sabbatized Sunday." 

Although there are occasional references to the 
White Mountains, as to "Agiochook" and the 
"Notch Mountains," in Emerson's writings, the re- 
gion seems to have made no great impression on 
him. He found his place of rest and refreshment 
amid the quieter beauties of the region in south- 
western New Hampshire dominated by Monadnock, 
which, says Starr King, "the genius of Mr. Emerson 
has made . . . the noblest mountain in literature." 

What more grateful honor could come to a moun- 
tain-lover than the permanent association of his 
name with the most striking piece of scenery of its 
kind in New England ! Such was the good fortune 
of Edward Tuckerman, Professor of Botany in Am- 
herst College from 1858 to his death in 1886, and in- 
defatigable explorer of the White Mountains, whose 
name is perpetuated in the region he loved so well by 
having been given to the wonderful ravine on the 
east side of Mount Washington, north of Boott 
Spur. This remarkable gorge, because of the sublim- 
ity of its steep cliffs with their semicircular sweep, 
its close relation to the chief summit, its famous 
snow arch, and the comparative ease with which it 
may be traversed, has become by far the most widely 
known of the White Mountain ravines. The route of 
several of the early explorers ^ in ascending Mount 

^ Probably of Gorges and Vines in 1642. The party of Captain 
Evans traversed it in 1774. Mr. S. B. Beckett, author of a railroad 

120 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

Washington, hundreds of pedestrians now pass 
through it every year and clamber up the side of the 
Mountain Cohseum, as the upper part of the gorge 
or the ravine proper is sometimes called. 

The kindly professor, who for his contributions 
to our knowledge of the botany of the region well 
merited the local distinction conferred upon him, 
first visited the Mountains in 1837. He made collec- 
tions in that year and the following three years, and 
again made botanical explorations from 1842 ^ to 
1853, spending each year several months in this 
region. He determined the relationship and range 
of many species and varieties of the plants, especially 
the lichens, found here. Starr King, to whose book 
Professor Tuckerman contributed two chapters, ap- 
plies to him Emerson's description of the forest seer 
beginning : — 

" A lover true, who knew by heart 
Each joy the mountain dales impart." 

Speaking of the Mountain region when he first 
visited it, Professor Tuckerman says, revealing by 
his words his simple tastes and love of wild nature : 
"It was then a secluded district, the inns offering 
only the homely cheer of country fare, and the paths 
to Mount Washington rarely trodden by any who 

guide-book to Portland, the White Mountains, and Montreal, pub- 
lished at the first-named city in 1853, and a gentleman from Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, made a thorough exploration of the ravine in 
1852, accompanied on a part of their trip by J. S. Hall, one of the 
builders of the first Summit House. Mr. Beckett and his companion 
are responsible for the names Hermit Lake, the Fall of a Thousand 
Streams, and the Mountain Coliseum. 
^ His companion that year was Asa Gray. 

121 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

did not prize the very way, rough as it might be, 
too much to wish for easier ones." 

It is but natural that such a lover of the moun- 
tains and the woods as Henry Thoreau should make 
journeys to the White Mountains, where he would 
expect to find so much to interest him both in the 
way of scenery and in the way of natural history. 
We are not surprised, then, to find the records of 
such trips in his Journal. 

His first visit was made as a sort of supplement or 
side-trip to his famous boating excursion, the record 
of which forms the groundwork of his first literary 
venture, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack 
Rivers." The bare facts of this trip to the Moun- 
tains, which was taken in September, 1839, are set 
down in the Journal and some details are to be found 
under ' ' Thursday ' ' in the ' ' Week. ' ' I give the course 
of the journey and its incidents as recorded in the 
former. Having left the boat near Hooksett, as 
it was impracticable to proceed farther in it, the 
brothers, Henry and John, walked to Concord, 
New Hampshire, from which town they went by 
stage on Friday, the 6th, to Plymouth, a distance of 
forty miles, finishing out the day by going on foot 
to Tilton's Inn in Thornton. The next day they 
walked through Peeling (Woodstock) and Lincoln to 
Franconia, pausing on the way to visit the Flume, 
the Basin, and the Notch, and to see the Old Man of 
the Mountain. On the 8th the sturdy trampers went 
on to Thomas J. Crawford's hotel, where they stayed 
on the loth. The following day was devoted to an 
ascent of Mount Washington, after the completion 

122 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

of which they rode to Conway. They returned to 
Concord by stage on the nth, and the next day re- 
gained their boat at Hooksett and started on the 
return voyage. 

July, 1858, was the time of Thoreau's second visit 
to this region. Setting out in a private carriage with 
a friend on the 2d, he ascended Red Hill on the 5th, 
and proceeded through Tamworth, Conway, North 
Conway, and Jackson to the Glen House. Having 
previously engaged Wentworth, who "has lived 
here [four miles above Jackson] thirty years, and 
is a native," as baggage-carrier and camp-keeper, 
he started at 11.30 a.m. on the 7th to ascend the 
Mountain road. After spending the night at a shanty 
near the foot of the ledge, with "a merry collier and 
his assistant, who had been making coal for the 
summit, and were preparing to leave the next morn- 
ing," Thoreau completed the ascent. As a result of 
an earlier start, he reached the Summit half an hour 
before the rest of his party and enjoyed a good view, 
which was hidden from his companions by a cloud 
that settled down before their arrival. 

Descending the next day (with some difficulty 
owing to a dense fog) into Tuckerman's Ravine, over 
the rocks and the snow, which latter he notes was 
"unexpectedly hard and dangerous to traverse," the 
party camped about a third of a mile above Hermit 
Lake. While here the guide, he records, made a fire 
without removing the moss and it spread even above 
the limit of trees, "thus leaving our mark on the 
mountain-side." A friend for whom he had left a 
note at the Glen House joined them at this camp, 

123 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

and the party slept in the tent the night of the 8th, 
with some discomfort, their fire being put out by 
rain. The next afternoon, Thoreau, in returning 
from an ascent of the stream, sprained his ankle ^ so 
badly that he could not sleep that night, or walk the 
next day. So they stayed at the camp until the 12th, 
when, the weather clearing up, they descended and 
passed the night at a camp a mile and a half west of 
Gorham. Two days more brought them through 
Randolph, Kilkenny, Jefferson Hill, Whitefield, and 
Bethlehem to the Franconia Notch, where they 
camped the night of the 14th half a mile up the side 
of Lafayette, which peak was ascended on the 15th, 
a good view being had of near points. After descend- 
ing, they rode to West Thornton and then began 
their homeward journey. 

It is superfluous to add that Thoreau's record is 
interspersed with frequent items of information on 
his special interests, the birds and flowers. He con- 
cludes his account of this journey with some observa- 
tions as to the best views and with a list of the plants 
found at different limits on Mount Washington. 

Another literary visitor to the White Mountains 
in the pre-railroad days, of whose experiences on the 
excursion we have some account, was the future 

^ Emerson, when giving, in his paper on Thoreau, instances of 
"pieces of luck" which happened to the naturalist, mentions his fall 
in Tuckerman's Ravine, and states that, "As he was in the act of 
getting up from his fall, he saw for the first time the leaves of the 
Arnica mollis." Unfortunately, this pretty story is not in accordance 
with fact. Thoreau's finding of the plant took place, we learn from 
the Journal, the day before and not at this time. Nor was he alone and 
made helpless by his fall, and so in danger of perishing had not some 
one chanced into the ravine and been attracted by his shouts, as one 
account says. 

124 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

historian of the struggle between France and Eng- 
land for supremacy in North America, Francis 
Parkman.^ As early as 1841, his sophomore year at 
Harvard, the studious young man had fixed upon 
the writing of the history of the conflict between 
the two European Powers on the soil of this conti- 
nent as his life-work, and even before that he had 
formed a passion for the woods and outdoor life. 
With a wisdom unusual for his years, he saw that a 
much wider range of knowledge and experience than 
could be gained in the study would be needed to 
equip him to handle adequately such a theme, and in 
this equipment a familiarity with the topography 
and life of the wilderness regions with which he was 
to deal was, he judged, a very important element. 
Having, as a preliminary step, begun, on entering 
college, a course of physical training designed to 
develop the utmost strength, agility, and endurance 
of which he was capable, he followed this up with a 
succession of journeys into the wilds of the United 
States and Canada to secure the background which 
he had foreseen he would need for his future work. 
To this preparatory training the vacations and lei- 
sure of a number of years were devoted. 

In these days of railroads and summer resorts in 
the White Hills It is hard to think of them as a wil- 
derness region, but such they were in 1 841, when 
Parkman, wishing to begin his explorations by 

^ Parkman kept a diary of each of his vacation trips, the best por- 
tions of which were used in writing various books, but the part relating 
to his White Mountain sojourn is for the most part unpublished. His 
account of his adventure at the Willey Slide is quoted in C. H. Farn- 
ham's A Life of Francis Parkman, 

125 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

familiarizing himself with the wilder parts of his na- 
tive New England, made, as the first of such trips, 
an excursion to northern New Hampshire. 

Accompanied by a classmate, Daniel Denison 
Slade,^ Parkman passed around Lake Winnepe- 
saukee, and through the valley of the Saco and the 
Crawford Notch. Thence the pair crossed to the 
Franconia Range, where they spent several delight- 
ful days. They then retraced in part their course, 
and crossed over to the Connecticut River, whence 
they proceeded to Colebrook and the Dixville Notch. 
An ascent of the Magalloway River with Indian 
guides concluded the excursion. While they were so- 
journing at Crawford's inn (the Notch House), the 
ascent of Mount Washington was made. An inter- 
esting human touch appears in the record that Park- 
man was greatly pleased by the "strength and spirit 
and good-humor " shown on this occasion by a young 
woman, who was a member of a lively party he had 
fallen in with, and who had previously charmed him 
by the "laughing philosophy" with which she had 
taken a "ducking" in his company while passing 
through the Notch on the stage in a pouring rain. It 
maybe added that the acquaintance so pleasantly 
begun ripened into a lifelong friendship. 

The most noteworthy feature of this first trip of 
Parkman' s was an exploit undertaken by him alone 
and characterized by him as "the most serious ad- 
venture it was ever my lot to encounter." This little 
excursion, which nearly cost him his life, was not a 

^ Mr. Slade contributed an interesting account of the trip to the 
New England Magazine for September, 1894. 

126 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

premeditated one. While staying at Crawford's he 
walked one day down the Notch to the Willey House, 
and out of curiosity began to ascend the pathway of 
the avalanche. Coming to the "inaccessible preci- 
pices" which Professor Silliman had noted as pre- 
venting his further progress in ascending this place 
a few years before, the adventurous young man 
determined to scale them, and succeeded in doing 
so " with considerable difficulty and danger." The 
descent was a yet more perilous undertaking, as, in 
order to get out of the ravine in which he found him- 
self, he was compelled first to climb up its steep and 
decaying walls to the surface of the mountain. His 
splendid nerve and presence of mind enabled him 
to achieve this well-nigh impossible and extremely 
hazardous climb. His badly torn clothing, his lac- 
erated fingers, and bruised legs were material indica- 
tions of the difficulty of the feat, the recital of the 
fact and the details of whose accomplishment aston- 
ished the company at the hotel and Landlord Craw- 
ford as well. 

"The entire journey was a delight to us," says 
Mr. Slade, " and in Parkman especially it augmented 
the love for the wild and picturesque, with which he 
had become enamored, and upon which he expati- 
ated most fully in his diary." 

Three of America's most noted preachers and 
patriots of the nineteenth century, Henry Ward 
Beecher, Phillips Brooks, and Thomas Starr King, 
were lovers of the White Mountains. The pastor of 
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, made a short visit to 
the region in the early days, and in the latter part of 

127 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

his life spent a portion of every summer there; the 
rector of Trinity Church, Boston, and Bishop of 
Massachusetts, tramped the hills as a young man 
and visited them at least once in later life ; the visits 
of the Boston and San Francisco divine had as one 
result the creation of the most famous of books on 
these mountains. 

The eloquent pastor of the Hollis Street Society 
of Boston appears to have first visited the Moun- 
tains in July, 1849.^ A passionate lover of the grand 
and beautiful in Nature, he became interested in the 
region his name is to be forever associated with, 
through his intimacy with another enthusiast for 
mountain scenery. This was his elder friend and al- 
ways congenial companion. Dr. Hosea Ballou, 2d, a 
noted Universalist clergyman, the first president and 
one of the founders of Tufts College. Dr. Ballou 
made the first of a series of visits to the White 
Mountains in 1844. He was, as his notebooks testify, 
a most careful observer, and he had made himself 
familiar by study with most of the great mountains 
of the earth. Thus he was eminently qualified to 
describe accurately the scenery of the New Hamp- 
shire highlands. After his first two visits he "em- 
bodied," as Mr. Frothingham puts it, "his fondness 
for them, in a beautiful and eloquent paper." 

* Richard Frothingham, in A Tribute to Thomas Starr King, says: 
"He first visited the White Hills at the age of thirteen [he was born 
December 17, 1824], probably with his father; but I have no facts 
as to this visit." The author, Hosea Starr Ballou, of the Life of 
Hosea Ballou, 2d, D.D., thinks this statement is apparently an error. 
King himself, in The White Hills, speaks of seeing Abel Crawford 
"in the year 1849, when we made our first visit to the White 
Hills." 

128 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

This article,! entitled "The White Mountains," 
which appeared in The Universalist Quarterly for 
April, 1846, turned Starr King's attention to the 
White Hills, led him to visit them, and was thus a 
progenitor of the greater work. 

King's companions on his first visit were a lifelong 
friend, Professor Benjamin F. Tweed, principal of 
the Bunker-Hill Grammar School of Charlestown 
and afterwards professor in Tufts College, and two 
others, who joined King and Tweed at Lowell. The 
party took the usual route of the pre-railroad days, 
going to Center Harbor on Lake Winnepesaukee the 
first day, delaying to ascend Red Hill the next morn- 
ing, and in the afternoon and night traveling in an 
overloaded stage to Conway, part of this journey 
being made through a forest fire and a thunder- 
storm. The belated travelers did not reach their 
destination until half-past eleven, but they were 
happy in having seen a never-to-be-forgotten sight, 
that of the woods on fire on the entire surface of the 
highest summit of the Osslpee Range. The following 
day, which was Saturday, they proceeded through 
the Notch to Crawford's Notch House, where Sun- 
day was spent. When they were standing directly in 
front of the Willey House, a heavy peal of thunder 
and the associations and scenes of the place pro- 
foundly moved them, Mr. King records. Monday 
morning, July 23, the ascent of Mount Washington 
was made on horseback, there being twelve in the 

^ "On this subject," says Mr. Frothingham, "I know nothing 
which had appeared superior to it; and well remember Mr. King's 
enthusiasm for the White Hills at the time of its publication." 

129 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

party, which included two guides. They arrived at 
the summit at half-past eleven, dined out on the 
rocks, — there was then no shelter there, — had a 
"most magnificent" view, as the day was "very 
clear," and, after having remained an hour, began 
the descent, which Mr. King found so much more 
tiresome than the ascent that he "walked more than 
half the way." It began to rain when they reached 
the summit of Clinton and most of the party were 
drenched when they regained the tavern. A visit to 
the Franconia Notch and its objects of interest com- 
pleted the tour. 

Mr. King repeated his visit many times, making 
his headquarters at Gorham, and in 1853 began to 
print accounts of his explorations ^ in the Boston 
Transcript. After having for ten years viewed the 
Mountains, in their beauty and grandeur in winter 
as well as in summer, he embodied the results of his 
observations and explorations in "The White Hills: 
Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry," which was 
published in 1859 on the eve of his final departure for 
California and which was at once received with 
great favor. ^ 

This noble volume, which one is safe in prophesy- 
ing will never be equaled or superseded in its field, 
is thus characterized by Mr. Frothingham: "This 

^ A companion for several seasons in his explorations was Henry 
Wheelock Ripley, who prepared editions of the Crawford History, 
printed in 1883 and 1886, and who purposed to add to that work a 
modern history of the Mountains. 

^ Mr. King's name is preserved in the Mountains by two fine 
memorials, Mount Starr King in Jefferson, named in 1861, and King's 
Ravine, the tremendous gorge, first explored and described by him, 
on the north side of Mount Adams. 

130 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

production is far more than a description of the 
White Hills ; its rich descriptions of every variety of 
landscape apply to all natural scenes, and bring out 
their inmost meaning. There is much of himself in 
this volume, of his rare spiritual insight, — much 
of what his cultured and reverent eye saw in the 
beauty and the grandeur that God is creating every 
day." 

Less notably associated with the Mountains in a 
literary way than Starr King, but far more memo- 
rably connected with them in a ministerial way, was 
the great preacher and pastor of Plymouth Church, 
Brooklyn's most famous citizen, Henry Ward 
Beecher. The year 1856 appears to be the date of 
Mr. Beecher's earliest acquaintance with the region. 
He evidently stayed at the Crawford House, then 
kept by J. L. Gibb. Humorously declaring himself 
"only a freshman, and in the first term at that," in 
"a university of mountains," he does not, he says, 
in the introductory paragraph of his paper contrib- 
uted to The Independent at that time, "propose to 
set forth and write out the whole of the White 
Mountains." " I will give you," he continues, "just 
a sprig of my experience." What his readers get, 
however, is an altogether delightful essay, ^ the first 
part of which gives an account of a descent on horse- 
back from the top of Mount Washington, an expe- 
rience which gave him "one half-hour of extreme 
pleasure and two hours of common pleasure." It is 

^ "A Time at the White Mountains," one of his regular contribu- 
tions, over his customary signature, a " #", to The Independent (July 
31, 1856). It is reprinted in Eyes and Ears. 

131 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

entirely to the "half-hour of extreme pleasure," 
which was a time passed in separation from his 
party, that this part of the essay is devoted. In elo- 
quent and beautiful language he tells what he saw 
and what he thought and felt when solitary in such 
a place. 

In the second half of the essay his descriptions of 
a beautiful stream, which joins the Saco near the 
hotel, of its pools, its "avenue of cascades" (one of 
which, a double one, was afterwards given his name), 
and its environment of forest and mountains, and of 
the glorious view, are charmingly done. Especially 
pleasing are his word-picture of the pool he selected 
for a refreshing plunge and his description of the 
witnessed actions and imagined thoughts of some 
trout whose ' ' mountain homestead ' ' he had so greatly 
and strangely disturbed. 

Mr. Beecher's becoming an annual visitor to the 
White Mountains was on this wise. For nearly thirty 
years he had been a sufferer from that distressing 
malady, hay fever, which attacked him every year 
about the i6th of August, almost to the day. For 
nearly six weeks he was sorely afflicted, reading, 
writing, and almost all forms of mental work being 
impossible. Finally his attention was called to the 
relief that the air of the White Mountains affords 
many sufferers, and, trying the experiment, he 
happily found exemption there from the attacks of 
the disease. He returned year after year in the 
seventies to the Twin Mountain House and soon the 
region became one of his subsidiary pulpits, as his 
thirst for doing his Master's work was such as not 

132 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

to allow him to lose any opportunity. The first year 
or two he rested, but after that he began holding in- 
formal services on Sundays. 

The use of the large hotel parlor followed, with 
preaching every Sunday morning. Soon the capacity 
of this summer church was outgrown, and then one 
of the large tents used at the State fairs was secured, 
benches being provided for the congregation. In 
this, during the last two or three years that he visited 
the Twin Mountain House, he preached regularly 
every Sunday for six weeks. For a number of years 
also, at the request of the guests, he led the daily 
service of morning prayer. This, his summer parish,^ 
became his most prominent field of work outside of 
Plymouth Church. From the neighboring hotels and 
near-by towns people came by hundreds to hear the 
famous preacher, filling the great tent. Thus he made 
his infirmity an instrumentality for good. 

It was in the first year (1862) of his rectorship of 
the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, that 
Phillips Brooks, tired from six months of hard labor 
in ministering to his large parish and in keeping the 
many engagements that pressed upon him, made his 
first visit to the White Mountains. To the vacation 
of this year "he had looked forward," says his biog- 
rapher, "with the eagerness of a schoolboy, to whom 
the holiday is the most real part of his existence." 
Accompanied by the Reverend Charles A. L. Rich- 
ards and the Reverend George Augustus Strong, 

^ In 1875 he published A Summer Parish: Sabbath Discourses and 
Morning Service of Prayer, at the "Twin Mountain House," White 
Mountains, New Hampshire, during the summer of 1874. 

133 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

his fellow students and close companions at the 
theological seminary and lifelong intimate friends, 
he set out, on August 4, to make the tour of the 
Mountains, an excursion which was not so common 
then as later, and which was a notable event in their 
lives. Phillips Brooks was not fond of exercise in 
those days, or indeed at any time in his life, but was 
endowed with rugged health. He did not like walk- 
ing, or at any rate did not practice it as a regular 
form of exercise, but while staying in Boston in July 
he had taken lessons in horseback riding, which activ- 
ity proved of service to him on this trip. The party 
made their headquarters at the Glen House, and 
Brooks did his share of mountain-climbing with the 
others. Their initial, or, as it were, practice climbs 
were up Mounts Surprise ^ and Hayes, two of Starr 
King's favorite viewpoints, near Gorham. In the 
course of their wanderings they were joined by Mr. 
Brooks's friend, the Reverend Mr. Cooper, of Phila- 
delphia, and by his brother William, of Boston. The 
trip culminated in an excursion which came near to 
putting an end to the great preacher's career then 
and there. Inspired by Starr King's exuberant en- 
thusiasm for the sublimity of the views to be gained 
by making such an expedition and for the physical 
joys of the experience, the travelers determined upon 
doing what was then known as "going over the 
Peaks," which meant crossing the Northern Peaks 
from Madison to Washington. When it is remem- 
bered that there were then no defined paths and 

^ The biography of Phillips Brooks has it " Mount Suspense," 
which seems to be a slip. 

134 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

guiding marks or signs for the trampers and that 
guides were few, the difficulty of the excursion in 
those days will be at once evident. Having secured 
a man as guide who was said to know the way, they 
started from the Glen House at six o'clock on the 
morning of August 12, intending to make a two days* 
trip of it. After going two miles or so on the road to 
Gorham, they struck up the mountain-side. Six 
hours' severe labor in the hot sun and close air and 
over fallen timber and deep beds of moss brought 
them to the timber-line. They climbed Madison, 
crossed its two summits, dined between Madison and 
Adams, and, after ascending the latter, passed on to 
Jefferson. At the base of this peak they had meant to 
camp, but, as it was blowing "half a hurricane," the 
guide insisted that the wind was too high and the 
temperature too low to make camping safe for heated 
and tired men and that therefore they must push for- 
ward. It was at sunset that they stood on the summit 
of Jefferson, and there were still two or three hours 
of good work before them. Mr. Brooks, for the first 
part of the day, had stood the prolonged exertion as 
well as any of the party, but somewhere on the part 
of the way which they were now passing over, the 
young giant, who in those days required double 
rations and on this occasion had been provided for 
only on the scale of ordinary men, began to flag, and 
declared he could go no farther. He implored his 
companions to leave him under the shelter of a rock, 
with a shawl, for the night, but as, of course, they 
would not hear to this and as they entreated him to 
go on, he struggled forward for a few minutes at a 

135 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

time and then flung himself down exhausted for a 
long rest. Night came on and the way was lost in 
the darkness, by the guide as well as by the others. 
Finally they divined what was the matter with 
Brooks and gave him food, some one having, for- 
tunately, an egg or two in reserve. Mr. Brooks 
having gained a little strength from food and rest, 
and the moon having risen and the wind being in 
their favor, they pressed on, and at last, a half-hour 
after midnight, the exhausted trampers reached their 
goal, the Tip-Top House. Tired as they were they 
had to sleep on the office floor, as every bed was 
taken. The following day they walked down the car- 
riage road in the morning and spent the remainder 
of the day resting. The remaining days of the trip 
were passed at North Conway, where an ascent of 
Kearsarge was accomplished on foot, and some other 
expeditions were made, one of which resulted for 
Brooks in a sprained ankle, which accident brought 
his tramp abruptly to a close. 

Mr. Brooks evidently enjoyed the trip, for we find 
him in August of the following year again tramping 
in the Mountains, accompanied by Mr. Richards, 
Professor C. J. Stille, one of his parishioners, and his 
brother Frederick.^ This tour, in the course of which 
he met numerous friends, was interspersed with 
rowing, occasional resorts to horseback riding, and 
mountain-climbing. One of the tramping excur- 
sions was from the Glen up Mount Washington, 

^ When writing to his brother to induce him to take this trip, Mr. 
Brooks mentions the Reverend Mr. Strong and the future Bishop of 
New York, Henry C. Potter, as planning to go. 

136 



FURTHER DISCOVERIES 

after which the travelers returned to North Con- 
way.^ 

The visitors who came in the early days to explore 
the Mountains or to see their scenic features stayed 
at most but a short time, far from long enough to 
form a strong love for the region or to enjoy its 
beauties satisfactorily. Probably the first city per- 
son to prolong his summer sojourns or to make fre- 
quent returns was Dr. Samuel A. Bemis, who as a 
boy had walked from Vermont to Boston, where he 
became a leading dentist and amassed a fortune. 
From 1827 to 1840 he spent nearly every summer in 
the White Hills, and in the latter year he took up 
his permanent residence in the glen in Hart's Loca- 
tion, at the base of Mount Crawford, in which 
Abel Crawford had lived so many years. There Dr. 
Bemis built the stone cottage, so well known to 
travelers up and down the Notch, which he made 
his home until his death in May, 1881. 

Having lent large amounts of money to Nathaniel 
T. P. Davis, the proprietor of the Mount Crawford 
House, on mortgage, on which Crawford's son-in- 
law ultimately had to default his payments. Dr. 
Bemis was obliged to foreclose. Thus he came into 
possession of a vast tract of woodland, extending for 
miles up the Notch, This great estate the eccentric 
old patriarch bequeathed to his long-time superln- 

^ My account of these summer excursions of Mr. Brooks is drawn 
from Dr. Allen's Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks. The details of 
the trip over the peaks are quoted by the biographer from the Rev- 
erend Charles A. L. Richards's account of it as set down in Remem- 
brances of Phillips Brooks by T\vo of his Friends [Richards and Strong]. 
(1893.) 

137 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

tendent, George W. Morey. Bemis Station on the 
railroad, Bemis Brook, Bemis Pond, and Mount 
Bemis, in addition to the cottage, preserve the name 
and memory of this lover of Nature, who is said to 
have named more of the mountains of this region 
than any other man. 



VI 

SOME FOREIGN VISITORS AND THEIR ACCOUNTS 
OF THEIR TOURS OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

The next Englishman after Josselyn to visit the 
White Hills and to give an account ^ of his journey 
was Edward Augustus Kendall, Esq., a miscella- 
neous writer, who, during the course of his travels in 
this country, passed through this region by wagon in 
November, 1807. From Portland he proceeded to 
Gorham, where he first saw the Mountains, he says, 
after leaving the Kennebec. ^ Thence he traveled to 
Conway, and from there he rode over the new turn- 
pike through the Notch and through "Briton's 
Woods," Bethlehem, "Lyttleton" (where he passed 
the night) , and Bath to the Connecticut River. Owing 
to the lateness of the season he could not ascend any 
of the Mountains, the summits of which were then 
covered with snow. On his way thither, when he 
reached Hiram, Maine, on the 17th, he had experi- 
enced the first serious fall of snow, and his journey, 
being undertaken at this late time of year, was neces- 
sarily a hasty one. He paused long enough on the 

* In his Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States in 
the years 1807 and 1808, in three volumes, published at New York in 
1809. The Dictionary of National Biography characterizes it as "a 
somewhat dull account of his wanderings." His discussion of the 
whiteness of the Mountains and its cause has been summarized in 
the Introduction. 

* He got his first view of them from some high land in Hallowell, 
Maine. 

139 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

way to eat a meal at "a small public house," twenty 
miles from Conway (evidently the Mount Crawford 
House), and speaks of passing another house, seven 
miles farther up (the Willey House), Captain Rose- 
brook's house, and the latter's son's farm in "Brit- 
on's Woods." The greatest height to which he as- 
cended, he states, was the "Beaver Meadow" 
(where the Saco rises), the origin of which tract he is 
at pains to explain. 

The derivation of place-names evidently was a 
subject of much interest to him, for he interrupts his 
narrative often to introduce extended discussions of 
the origin of some of those he meets with in the 
course of his travels. Of such names in this region, 
Ammonoosuc and Coos receive attention, and there 
is a lengthy canvassing of the signification and 
proper form of the name "Moose Hillock." 

The tricennial period 1830 to i860 was memorable 
in White Mountain travel by reason of the visits of 
a number of foreign tourists, who made excursions 
to this region a part of their American tours and who 
have included in the record of their travels accounts 
of the incidents and experiences of their trips 
through the Mountains. Among the earliest of these 
foreign visitors was a London barrister of royal name 
and eminently fair mind, who made a tour of North 
America in the years 1831 and 1832. Henry Tudor, 
Esq., had been an extensive traveler, and he under- 
took the transatlantic voyage for the purpose of 
visiting the only quarter of the globe that he had not 
seen and also for the sake of regaining his health, 
which was somewhat impaired. He had no intention 

140 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

of'publishing an account of his travels (which he had 
given in letters to various friends) , and would never 
have done so, he declares, had he not been dis- 
pleased with the tendency of some tourists to Amer- 
ica "to sully the fair reputation, and to depreciate 
whatever is excellent in the rising greatness of our 
transatlantic brethren." Particularly he reprobates, 
in his Preface, the "Domestic Manners of the Amer- 
icans," pronouncing Mrs. Trollope's observations as 
"at once uncharitable" and as "illogical in their de- 
ductions." Moreover, he devotes a part of the body 
of his book, " Narrative of a Tour in North America " 
(1834), to some remarks upon that lady's strictures. 

Our present interest in Mr. Tudor and his travels, 
however, lies solely in the fact that he made, in the 
latter part of October, 1831, an excursion through 
the White Mountains, going by wagon from Maine 
to Conway, riding through the Notch in a carriage, 
passing Thomas Crawfurd's [sic] hotel, and his 
brother's hostelry also, and crossing by way of 
Littleton to the Connecticut River. At the Notch 
House he felt, he says, an inclination to ascend the 
Mountains and might have done so had not a re- 
cent fall of snow rendered it impracticable. He was 
filled with admiration of the bold and romantic 
scenery, especially of the Notch, and was much 
impressed by the story of the destruction of the 
household of "Mr. Martin Willey," which he nar- 
rates with considerable fullness. 

Two other foreigners who paid a visit to the region 
about this time were Charles Joseph Latrobe, an 
experienced English traveler and observer, and his 

141 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

friend, the Count de Pourtal^s, a young Frenchman, 
who together made an extended tour of North 
America in 1832 and 1833. On their voyage to New 
York from Havre, they had as fellow passenger 
Washington Irving, who was returning to his native 
land after seventeen years' absence. With him they 
formed an intimate acquaintance on shipboard, 
which was resumed ashore and which led to his be- 
coming their companion in a number of their excur- 
sions, the association being continued for the greater 
part of the summer and autumn of 1832. Latrobe's 
entertaining letters to a younger brother narrating 
the incidents of his travels, describing the places 
and persons seen, and commenting on the govern- 
ment, politics, manners, customs, institutions, spirit, 
etc., of the country in general or of particular re- 
gions, were published in two volumes in 1835, under 
the title "The Rambler in North America," the 
work being dedicated to Irving. 

It was in July, 1832, that the travelers, in com- 
pany with Irving, who had appointed Boston as a 
rendezvous previous to a visit to the White Moun- 
tains, and whom the foreigners found at the Tremont 
Hotel awaiting their arrival, made their journey to 
the northern wilderness. They approached the re- 
gion via Concord, Lake Winnepesaukee, and Con- 
way, whence they passed through the Notch and 
descended the valley of the Ammonoosuc. The as- 
cent of Mount Washington was achieved by the 
party, but "under disadvantageous circumstances." 
"Upon gaining the summit," says Latrobe, "after 
some hours' toil and much expectation, we were 

142 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

enveloped in heavy mist, which set our patience at 
defiance, and sent us cold and wet on our downward 
route." 

Mr. Latrobe, on the preceding day, ascended 
alone, "under better auspices," the summit "third 
in rank," and so gained a view which enabled him to 
give a brief description of the scenery for the benefit 
of the recipient of his letters. Irving being obliged to 
return to New York for a few days, Pourtales and 
Latrobe continued on to Lancaster without him and 
thence crossed Vermont and proceeded to Saratoga 
Springs, where they kept their appointment to meet 
Irving again. 

Of what impression the White Mountains made 
upon the great writer who has immortalized the 
Hudson and the Catskills in literature, we have no 
record. Writing to his brother Peter, he declares the 
central New Hampshire country "beautiful beyond 
expectation" and his course down the Connecticut 
River to Springfield as a passing "through a con- 
tinued succession of enchanting scenes"; but he 
writes nothing of the White Mountains further than 
the brief statement, "We kept together through the 
mountains." Possibly the unpleasant experience 
encountered on the Mount Washington trip is re- 
sponsible for his silence as to this region. 

In the autumn of the same year (1832) as that of 
the visit of Latrobe and his companions, another 
English traveler, E. T. Coke, a lieutenant of the 
Forty-fifth Regiment, in the course of a compre- 
hensive tour of the United States and the British 
provinces, made a trip to the Mountains, of which 

143 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

he has given a lively account in the second volume 
of his "A Subaltern's Furlough," pubHshed in 1833. 

A fatiguing and rough coach journey of eighteen 
hours took him from Concord to Conway on the i8th 
of October. Such was the soldier's ambition that the 
next morning he started at a quarter to three to 
go through the Notch. The traveler (who was of 
an artistic bent and wished to do some sketching), 
on the arrival of the coach at the southern entrance 
to the Notch, alighted from it, and, ordering his 
baggage to be left at the inn beyond the pass, sat 
down to admire the "awful, grand and sublime 
spectacle, which the Notch presents." The chance 
rolling of a stone down the mountain-side and the 
starting-up of a partridge brought to his mind the 
thought of an avalanche and caused him to hasten 
his sketching work and leave the valley. He found 
his baggage at Ethan Crawford's, where he arrived 
after a toilsome journey and where he stayed several 
days, entertained, he notes, by his host's hunting 
stories. It was too windy to climb Washington on 
the 2 1st, but on the 22d, he started with a guide at 
4.30 A.M. and reached the summit at 8.15, having 
been one and three quarters hours in covering the 
three miles from the base. Of the view, which he 
found "most extensive," he remarks, "It did not, I 
must confess, altogether answer my expectations, 
nor, to my taste, was it equal to that from Mount 
Hoi yoke, where all was richness and life." 

After his descent, he proceeded to Bethlehem and 
thence to Littleton, where he arrived In the evening. 
The next day (the 23d) being cold and rainy, he 

144 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

remained at Littleton, but on the 24th he rode out 
to Franconia, and, passing through the Franconia 
Notch, crossed over to the Connecticut River and 
Vermont. On his way he visited the " Profile of the 
Old Man of the Mountain," about which he remarks, 
*'No art could improve the effect, nor could any 
attempt be made to assist It; for, the profile being 
seen perfect only from one point, the slightest devia- 
tion from that spot throws all Into a confused mass." 

In the autumn of 1835, the noted English writer, 
Harriet Martineau, who was spending two years of 
travel in the United States, visited the White Moun- 
tains.^ She left Boston on the i6th of September in 
company with three friends, going by way of Lake 
WInnepesaukee, which the party crossed on a steam- 
boat and in the neighborhood of which they paused 
long enough to make an ascent of " Red Mountain" 
(Red Hill). This done, they proceeded to Conway, 
whence they went in a private conveyance through 
the Crawford Notch, stops being made at Pen- 
dexter's and the elder Crawford's, and Ethan Allen 
Crawford's hospitable dwelling being reached at 
nightfall. 

Their purpose of ascending Mount Washington 
the next day was frustrated by a tempest of wind 
and snow on that peak, but the day was spent "de- 
lightfully" in climbing Mount Deception, tracing 

^ She devotes a section of volume ii of her Retrospect of Western 
Travel (published in 1838), to a description of the region and a narra- 
tion of the incidents of her journey. The earlier part of the trip is 
related in her Society in America. This is followed by a brief account 
of the Willey disaster, by a pleasant characterization of Ethan Allen 
Crawford and of his hospitality, and by a description of the host's 
ways of entertaining and amusing his guests. 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the course of the Ammonoosuc, and watching the 
storms. In the late afternoon, the tourists set out 
in a wagon for Littleton, passing Bethlehem ("con- 
sisting, as far as we could see, of one house and two 
barns"), and reaching about six o'clock their desti- 
nation, where they were most comfortably enter- 
tained "at Gibb's house." The following day was 
devoted to an excursion to the Franconia Notch. 
Unfortunately, the weather was showery and cloudy, 
and soon after their arrival they were glad to take 
refuge from one pelting downpour in the Lafayette 
House, then just erected. Although, as she puts it, 
"we . . . made ourselves acquainted with the prin- 
cipal features of the pass," she makes no mention of 
the Profile, whose existence was apparently unknown 
to her and which was doubtless on that day hidden 
by clouds or mist. After dinner, however, when 
they had duly given an account of themselves in 
the host's new album, they started, in defiance of 
the weather, to see the Flume, which she calls the 
Whirlpool and characterizes as "the grand object 
of the pass." In spite of the fact that it rained hard 
during their stay of half an hour there, and although 
they returned to Littleton in pitch darkness and 
arrived there wet to the skin, the experience did not 
discourage the writer from concluding her account 
with the opinion that the Franconia Defile is "the 
noblest mountain pass I saw in the United States." 
The most famous of foreign scientists to explore 
the Mountains was Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., the 
eminent geologist. Early in his second visit to the 
United States, in 1845, he set out, accompanied by 

146 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

his wife, on an excursion thither from Boston, the 
first part of their itinerary being along the seacoast to 
Portland. Their course from there was to Conway, 
then through the Crawford Notch to Fabyan's, 
where they remained several days, ascending Mount 
Washington on horseback on October 7. Leaving 
Fabyan's, they journeyed to Bethlehem and the 
Franconia Notch, and thence traveled by stage to 
Plymouth, whence they returned via Concord to 
Boston. 

Geological and botanical matters were naturally 
uppermost in Sir Charles's mind during the tour, but 
he sets down many interesting observations and re- 
marks concerning things political, social, and reli- 
gious. He records the names of many botanical 
specimens found, and he was particularly interested 
in the alpine species of plants inhabiting Mount 
Washington, the explanation of whose presence there 
he discusses briefly. At Fabyan's he found Mr. 
Oakes ("one of the ablest botanists in America"), 
who was his companion in walks about there and 
who was a member of the party of nine which made 
the ascent of the chief peak. 

The geological matter that especially engaged the 
great scientist's attention was that of the effects of 
slides on the rocks over which they had passed, his 
object being to determine whether any of the grooves 
and scratches on them are caused by avalanches. As 
a result of his investigations at the scene of the 
Willey Slide, where he clambered up four hundred 
feet above the river under the guidance of the elder 
Crawford, and at other places, he became convinced 

147 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

that the long and straight furrows could not be due 
to this cause. 

Although he stayed a couple of days or so at the 
Franconia Notch and went from there to Plymouth 
by stage, he does not speak of the Profile or of the 
Flume. La.ck of time to make the side trip to the 
latter when on his way through the Notch may have 
been the reason for his silence about it. Perhaps, 
also, such curiosities as these did not appeal to his 
scientific mind. 

Another foreigner of note who included a tour to 
the White Mountains in her course of travel in 
America was the Swedish novelist, Fredrika Bremer, 
who spent two years in this country. In August, 
1 85 1, the month preceding her departure, she paid 
a visit of several days to the Mountains, of which 
trip she has left an entertaining account,^ with lively 
comments on some of the incidents of the journey 
and on some of the practices of fellow tourists, and 
especially with much description of the scenery, 
which impressed her greatly. That of the Franconia 
Notch reminded her of "the glorious river valleys of 
Dalecarlia or Norsland" in her native land, but was 
pronounced by her "more picturesque, more playful 
and fantastic," and declared to have "more cheerful 
diversity" and an "afHuence of wood" and "beauti- 
ful foliage" that are "extraordinary." She declined 
to attempt the ascent of Mount Washington because 
of the difficulty of the expedition and because of the 

* See volume 11 of her The Homes of the New World: Impressions 
of America. Translated by Mary Howi'tt, in two volumes (1853). 
The work is a transcription of her letters to her sister at home. 

148 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

nature of the view, visited the Flume, which inter- 
ested her greatly, and saw the Profile, ^ which struck 
her very differently from most people. So singular is 
her impression of it that her characterization of it 
may well be given here for its interest. 

The peculiarity of these so-called White Mountains is 
[she says] the many gigantic human profiles which, in 
many places, look out from the mountains with a precision 
and perfect regularity of outline which Is quite astonish- 
ing. They have very much amused me, and I have 
sketched several of them in my rambles. We have our 
quarters here ^ very close to one of these countenances, 
which has long been known under the name of "the Old 
Man of the Mountain." It has not any nobility in Its 
features, but resembles a very old man in a bad humor, 
and with a nightcap on his head, who is looking out from 
the mountain half inquisitive. Far below the old giant's 
face is an enchanting little lake, resembling a bright oval 
toilet-glass, inclosed in a verdant frame of leafage. The 
Old Man of the Mountain looks out gloomily over this 
quiet lake, and the clouds float far below his chin. 

In this connection it may also be of interest to 
know that, while she was visiting in Boston, more 
than a year before, Charles Sumner read to her one 
day Hawthorne's story of "The Great Stone Face," 
which "poem in prose," as she characterizes it, gave 
her so much pleasure that she wrote a summary of it 
as a part of her letter sent at that time. 

A mid-century visitor to America of an unusual 
kind and of some distinction was the Honorable 

^ She also mentions "Willey's House" and briefly narrates the 
story of the disaster and that of the fate of Nancy, as connected with 
a "place" called "Nancy Bridge." 

* She stayed at the Lafayette House. 

149 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Amelia Matilda Murray, a maid of honor to Queen 
Victoria. A brilliant woman of high social position 
(her mother was a lady in waiting upon two prin- 
cesses and as a girl Amelia was much at court), 
she did not allow court life to absorb by any means 
her entire attention, but found time and opportunity 
to become an excellent botanist and artist and also 
to interest herself in the education of destitute and 
delinquent children. 

In July, 1854, she started on a tour of the United 
States, Cuba, and Canada, not returning home until 
October, 1855. In the latter part of August of the 
first year a visit of about ten days to the White 
Mountains was made, of which she has left a viva- 
cious account in her "Letters from the United 
States, Cuba, and Canada," published in 1856.^ 

Botany and sketching were naturally her special 
interests on her American tour. Immediately after 
her arrival she made the acquaintance of Asa Gray, 
who, she writes on August 4, "has proposed botaniz- 
ing over part of this country with me." On the 
excursion with which we are concerned, he accom- 
panied her as far as Alton Bay, whence he returned 
to Boston. The Mountains were approached in the 
usual way at that day, that is, via Center Harbor 
and Conway. The Honorable Miss Murray did not 
particularly enjoy mountain-climbing, and so re- 

^ An interesting sidelight on her quality is afforded by the fact that 
when she was reminded, on proposing to print an account of her 
travels, that court officials were not allowed to publish anything 
savoring of politics, she resigned her post rather than suppress her 
opinions, — she had returned a zealous advocate of the abolition of 
slavery. She prepared, but did not publish, a series of sketches to 
accompany her book. {Dictionary of National Biography.) 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

fused to ascend Red Hill ^ with her party. The jour- 
ney to Conway, "a drive hot and dusty but very 
beautiful," was made in "a kind of char-a-banc, 
hired for the purpose." From Conway she went to 
the Crauford [sic] House on Sunday morning, 
August 20, the start being made at 6 a.m. "Such a 
beautiful drive!" she exclaims. At her destination 
she found acquaintances and was induced to accom- 
pany them on a drive, after six horses, to the summit 
of Mount Willard. "Having once embarked in the 
undertaking, I was ashamed to insist upon being let 
off; but the ascent was really a tremendous one for 
any vehicle whatever; and how we ever got safely 
up and down again is a marvel to me," she writes. 
The temptation to join a party in ascending Mount 
Washington on horseback the next day she resisted, 
doubtless without much effort. She then continued 
her tour, going to the Profile House on the 22d, and 
on the morning of the following day driving to the 
Flume House. In connection with the Profile and 
Profile Lake she records: "A legend is attached to 
the latter, which says, that all who rise early may 
see the old man of the mountain take his bath in 
the lake." She found the scenery round the Flume 
House so fine that she removed there on the 24th 
and stayed until the morning of the 29th. On the 
morning of her last full day at this place, with an 
American acquaintance whom she found staying 
there, she climbed to the top of "Pemmewhasset," 

^ This long ridge, a number of times mentioned in the text, is 
situated north of Lake Winnepesaukee in Moultonborough. It com- 
mands a wonderful view, whose praises have been celebrated by 
many writers. 

151 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

from which, she says, "there is a charming view up 
and down the valley of the Saca [sic] . " Some one had 
evidently misinformed her as to the geography of the 
valley she was in, for, in recording her ride from the 
Flume House to Wells River, she writes, "The road 
. . . runs nearly the whole way by the River Saco, 
the same we passed at Conway." 

She has much to say in praise of the beauty of the 
mountain country, which appealed strongly to her 
artistic sensibilities. On the social side, the comfort 
of the hotels and the cordiality, frankness, and 
kindness of the people she met especially struck 
this English traveler, who found the hotel life 
" like the freedom of a very large country-house in 
England." 

The English novelist, Anthony Trollope, he of the 
"nulla dies sine linea" method of doing literary 
work, is another famous foreigner who visited the 
White Mountains and gave an account of his excur- 
sion and recorded his impressions of the region in a 
book. Early in the course of his travels in North 
America, one result of which was an entertaining 
and fair-minded volume on the subject, he made 
a brief circuit tour of the Mountains. It was in 
September, 1861, that, on his way to Canada, he 
paused long enough to make the trip. His way of 
approach was by the Grand Trunk Railway from 
Portland to Gorham, and thence by wagon to the 
Glen House. From this starting-point he made an 
ascent of Mount Washington on a pony, but, as he 
says of this expedition," I did not gain much myself 
by my labour," he evidently experienced the rather 

152 



SOME FOREIGN VISITORS 

common lot of being deprived of any view by the 
presence of clouds. The following night was passed 
at Jackson, and the next day was devoted to a wagon 
journey to the Crawford House and a walk up Mount 
Willard. After spending the night at this hostelry, 
he completed his Mountain excursion by a ride over 
Cherry Mountain and thence back to Gorham. 

He expresses his surprise in finding a district in 
New England with such fine scenery, much of which, 
he declares, "is superior to the famed and classic 
lands of Europe," and further in finding it so easily 
accessible and abundantly supplied with large hotels. 
The view from Mount Willard down the Notch he 
pronounces unequaled on the Rhine. The brilliancy 
of the autumn foliage, unapproached in any other 
land, he confesses to be beyond his powers of descrip- 
tion. 



i 



VII 

THE EARLY HOTELS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF 
THE REGION AS A SUMMER RESORT 

In an earlier chapter have been chronicled the first 
comings to the Mountains of inhabitants of the older 
and more established and populous settlements on 
the seacoast, who came not to stay permanently, but 
to pass through the region or to tarry a short time in 
it for the purpose of pleasure travel, or of explora- 
tion. The more noteworthy of such early visitors 
were, it will be recalled, men of learning, such as 
President Dwight and Drs. Belknap and Cutler, who 
made the journey, long and arduous as it was in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, with a mixed 
motive, in which the chief element was the desire 
of adding to their stock of information. They had 
heard of the beauty and grandeur of the scenery of 
the Mountain district, and wished to see it for them- 
selves, so the pleasure to be derived from viewing 
the landscape was an element in their reason for com- 
ing, as was also the desire for recreation; but their 
chief concern was ever knowledge of the natural 
phenomena and physical conditions of the region and 
of the effects of man's occupation of a wilderness and 
first attempts at subduing it. 

These explorers or travelers, whose main Interests 
were, as has been said, scientific, or whose minds, at 
any rate, were inquiring, were followed early in the 

154 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

nineteenth century by a slowly increasing number of 
a class whose purpose in coming was entirely one of 
pleasure and recreation, the precursors of the multi- 
tude of summer tourists and visitors of recent days. 
In the preceding two chapters have been summa- 
rized the incidents of the tours of the more noted of 
those persons, American and foreign, who came in 
the early days to view the scenic beauties and won- 
ders of the region, their experiences, and the com- 
ments they chose to make on things seen. 

This growing desire on the part of travelers and 
pleasure seekers, to make a trip to the highlands of 
the north country, stimulated the residents and the 
local authorities to endeavor to meet the demand 
thus created and to turn it to pecuniary advantage, 
by affording facilities for making the journey and 
more and better accommodations for the entertain- 
ment of passers-through or sojourners. This dis- 
position manifested itself in the building of better 
roads, the construction of bridle paths and trails, the 
establishment of stage-lines on certain main-traveled 
routes, and the erection of comfortable inns. Fore- 
most among the residents of the region in this pio- 
neer work were the members of the Crawford family. 
The improvements made by them and others fos- 
tered in turn the desire of making the excursion, and 
in consequence of this reciprocal action, and also 
in some measure because of the wider extension of 
the knowledge of the existence of such grand and 
beautiful scenery so comparatively near at hand, the 
number of travelers, as has been indicated, gradually 
increased. It remained for the coming of the rail- 

155 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

roads, the growth of the country in population and 
wealth, and the rise and development of the practice 
of spending the summer or a part of it in the country, 
and of the closely related custom of taking summer 
vacations, all circumstances occurring in or char- 
acteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
to make of the White Mountain district the great 
summer recreation ground and tourist resort it has 
become. 

In the earlier period of this growth of the region 
as a resort, however, the visitors were tourists only, 
who devoted but a few days at most to seeing the 
Mountains. Many of them paused long enough, as 
we have seen, to make, under the guidance of the 
Crawfords or of others, an ascent of the chief peak, 
but that done and the notches visited or traversed, 
they passed on, in most cases never to return. It was 
not until late in the thirties that people came to pass 
the entire season or at least to make stays of any 
length at one place, and began to make annual re- 
turns to some village or hamlet, such, for instance, as 
Conway Corner or North Conway. I have spoken 
in another place of the pioneer in this custom, Dr. 
Bemis, of Hart's Location. 

The first inns in the region, therefore, were opened 
to provide entertainment for transient guests, which 
included the tourists and the many persons engaged 
in the commercial traffic that was carried on over 
certain main routes of travel, especially that through 
the Crawford Notch, which formed the only direct 
connection between the seacoast and the upper 
Connecticut Valley. These hostelries were, as Haw- 

156 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

thorne expresses it, "at once the pleasure-house of 
fashionable tourists and the homely inn of country 
travelers," and their guests were often of the mot- 
ley character of a group the novelist describes, in 
the sketch ^ from which this quotation is taken, as 
spending a night at Ethan Crawford's when he was 
once a guest there. 

The building or opening of the earliest of these 
houses of entertainment has been already recorded. 
Let the facts be again set down briefly for the sake 
of bringing the information into juxtaposition with 
other circumstances of the same kind. 

The first house of entertainment in the region was 
built, it will be recalled, by Captain Eleazar Rose- 
brook in 1803 on the site of the present Fabyan 
House. This house was burned in 1818, shortly after 
Ethan Allen Crawford received it from his grand- 
father, and was immediately succeeded by a small 
house, which was moved to the site. In 1824 and 
1825, Mr. Crawford added a good-sized building to 
this latter structure to accommodate the increasing 
number of summer travelers. Another addition was 
erected in 1832 and 1833. 

Meantime, as travel through the region and es- 
pecially over the new turnpike through the Notch 
increased, hotels and taverns of a simple type were 
opened along the main routes. The rude habitation 
known as the "Willey House" was built, as has 
been already mentioned, probably in the last decade 

^ "Our Evening-Party among the Mountains," one of the 
"Sketches from Memory," in Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne, 
as has been narrated, stopped at Crawford's in the autumn of 1832. 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

of the eighteenth century, and, not long after the 
opening of Rosebrook's hotel, was opened as a pub- 
lic house by one Henry Hill. It was kept by him 
and others for several years and was at length aban- 
doned. Farther south, on Hart's Location, Rose- 
brook's son-in-law, Abel Crawford, began to entertain 
travelers at his home, which came to be known as the 
"Mount Crawford House," and which was kept 
for years by his son-in-law, Nathaniel T. P. Davis. 
Here Webster, Everett, Rufus Choate, and Presi- 
dent Pierce were guests when visiting the region on 
fishing trips. The old house was torn down some 
years since, ^ its last openings to the public having 
been in 1872 and 1876. 

The early inn at Upper Bartlett was kept for years 
by "Judge" Obed Hall, who had been a member of 
Congress. Grenville Mellen tells of stopping there 
in 1 819 and characterizes his host as "the wonder 
and curiosity of his region," noting his picturesque 
character and rugged, honest hospitality and his 
abilities as a talker and story-teller. 

The Honorable John Pendexter, who built the 
hotel, afterwards enlarged and improved and now 
known as the "Pendexter Mansion," in Intervale, 
came to the wilderness from Portsmouth ^ in the 
winter of 1772 or 1773, living at first in a log cabin 
and later in a frame house on the lowland. Another 
early house in this locality was Meserve's East 

^ In 1900. A cottage, still standing at the railroad station, was 
built of the sound timber. 

^ The eighty miles were made by the pioneer on foot, his wife, 
Martha, riding on an old horse, with a feather bed for a saddle, and 
he dragging the household furniture on a hand sled. 

158 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

Branch House at Lower Bartlett, near the location 
of the Pitman Hall of to-day. 

The great hotel locality of this region was, how- 
ever, the town of Conway. Here, as the chief stop- 
ping-place at the east entrance to the Mountains, a 
number of taverns or inns were early established. 
About 1 812, the Washington House, later the ClifT 
House, threw open its doors for the entertainment of 
strangers in North Conway, destined to become the 
principal tourist center of the town and the leading 
summer resort of the eastern side of the region. 
Daniel Eastman was its builder and proprietor. By 
1825, when summer visitors began to come, the 
taverns in the town, besides Eastman's were, accord- 
ing to Mrs. Mason, Thomas Abbott's Pequawket 
House at Conway (formerly known as Conway 
Corner) ; Benjamin Osgood's house at Black Cat, in 
the lower end of the town; the McMillan House 
at North Conway, established by Colonel Andrew 
McMillan, a native of Ireland, who came there from 
Concord about 1764; and Samuel W. Thompson's 
small tavern in North Conway, situated where now 
stands the Kearsarge. Chatauque,^ or Conway Cor- 
ner, became, as travel increased, the starting-point 
for stage-lines to distant points, such as Concord, 
Dover, Littleton, and Portland. In these days most 
of the tourists came by coach from Center Harbor, 
but numbers, proportionately much greater than in 

^ This name was given to the village, according to Mrs. M. E. 
Eastman, by an old resident, who, on returning to his native town 
after having spent a number of years near Chautauqua, New York, 
remarked on the resemblance of the right-angled crossroads to the 
"four corners" in the New York State village. 

159 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

later days until the advent of the automobile, trav- 
eled by private conveyance. Mails in the pre-stage 
days were infrequent. In 1775, a messenger brought 
"the post monthly"; in 1781, the Government. em- 
ployed a rider to bring the mail fortnightly. From 
1825 to 1829, Samuel W. Thompson carried it on 
horseback from Conway to Littleton once a week,^ 
and after that a two-horse wagon was driven over 
the route until the stage-line was established. 

Noted visitors to North Conway during its in- 
fancy as a summer resort were many, the town being, 
as has been indicated, the chief gateway to the 
Mountains. Some of them who wrote about their 
tours are named in the preceding chapters. 

The artists, who early made the village a sort of 
American Barbizon, and who did so much to extend 
the locality's fame, will be dealt with in another 
chapter. 

An important event in the hotel history of North 
Conway was the erection, in 1861, of the structure 
which constitutes the south wing of the present 
Kearsarge House. The enterprising Samuel W. 
Thompson, owner of the older hotel of the same 
name, 2 was the builder of the new house of enter- 

^ Mr. Crawford records that, in 1828, he was transporting the mail 
from Conway to Littleton twice a week, and that after the heavy rain 
of the 2d day of September, — a downpour "which was as great as 
the one we had two years before" and which carried away many of 
the newly rebuilt bridges and destroyed much of the road, — it was 
impossible to go with a horse. "We carried it," he says, "regularly 
on our backs, without losing more than one single trip." 

^ The old tavern was removed to a side street and made over into 
a dwelling-house. It is now used as the Episcopal rectory. I owe this 
information to Mr. Thompson's daughter, Mrs. L. J. Ricker, of 
Kearsarge Hall. 

160 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

tainment and for many years its proprietor. In 1872 
he completed the present hotel. 

At Bethlehem the first tavern-keeper's license was 
granted on December 8, 1800, by Selectmen Moses 
Eastman and Amos Wheeler to their colleague, 
Captain Lot Woodbury. The need for such a house 
of entertainment grew out of the increasing impor- 
tance of the new town as a station of commerce be- 
tween Portland and northern New Hampshire. This 
public house of Squire Woodbury stood at the west 
end of the street, near where the Alpine House of to- 
day is situated, and was a famous tavern for many 
a year. Other early taverns were those kept by 
Thomas Jefferson Spooner, Joseph Plummer, John 
G. Sinclair, and the Turners, whose signboard bears 
the date of 1789. Gradually Bethlehem declined as a 
commercial place and became a summer resort only, 
a hotel being built before long solely for the purpose 
of entertaining summer visitors, now almost the only 
source of revenue to the town and certainly the only 
one for Bethlehem Street. 

The building of the new Notch House on the 
little plateau at the northern entrance (the Gate) of 
the Crawford Notch has been barely mentioned in 
a preceding chapter. A few details may be added 
here. The hotel owed its origin to the thought and 
enterprise of Ethan Allen Crawford, then proprietor 
of the modest inn at the Giant's Grave. It became 
evident to him that an establishment for accommo- 
dating the tourists who were coming in increasing 
numbers was a necessity at the Notch entrance, as 
many wished to stop at that point and leave their 

161 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

horses while they pursued their way down the hill 
on foot to view the cascades, and on their return 
needed some refreshment. ' ' Having, ' ' says Mr. Craw- 
ford, "a disposition to accommodate the public, and 
feeling a little self-pride to have another Crawford 
settled here, I consulted with my father, and we 
agreed to build here and place a brother of mine in 
the house." In the autumn of 1827, accordingly, the 
Crawfords prepared timber for a frame one hundred 
and twenty feet in length, and thirty-six feet in 
width; but, just as they were about to raise this, 
snow fell so deeply that they had to give the work up 
for that year. In the next winter, in the beginning of 
1828, Mr. Crawford bought lumber and brick, and in 
the spring the building was raised and joiners put to 
work on it. They, with some aid from the owners, 
before winter set in had the outside of the building 
finished and the inside so far advanced toward com- 
pletion that the house was a comfortable habitation. 
After the chief owner had bought furniture for it in 
Portland and had supplied it with provisions, his 
brother, Thomas J., moved into it in January, 1829. 
Owing to its newness and to its convenient location, 
it had a" large share of the winter business and it soon 
became also a great place of resort for the summer 
tourists. Thomas J. Crawford remained its propri- 
etor until 1852. About this time, he began to build a 
hotel on the site of the present Crawford House, but 
he got into pecuniary difficulties and was obliged to 
sell out to a company, of which Mr. J. L. Gibb, who 
had been the manager of the Lafayette House in 
the Franconia Notch, was the head. Mr. Gibb com- 

162 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

pleted the house ^ and ran It successfully for a num- 
ber of years. In 1853, when fire destroyed the other 
hotel of this region, the Mount Washington House, 
four miles distant, the Crawford House was enlarged 
by its enterprising proprietor and the old Notch 
House was repaired and refurnished to provide ac- 
commodations for the great number of travelers who 
came to the Mountains. Both these houses soon fell 
victims to the fire fiend, the time-honored old build- 
ing being the first to go, in 1854. The new structure 
succumbed to the great enemy of summer hotels on 
April 30, 1859. In rebuilding it, a feat of rapid con- 
struction, which was remarkable then and would 
be so even to-day, was performed, but sixty days be- 
ing required by the builder to replace the structure 
on a somewhat larger scale. And the lumber had to 
be drawn seventeen miles! On the night of July 4 
its management was able to serve one hundred 
guests in the dining-room. The present Crawford 
House is substantially the hotel built at that time. 

The history of the old hotel in the Ammonoosuc 
Valley, whose fate has just been incidentally men- 
tioned, may well be recounted here. It will be re- 
called that Ethan Allen Crawford, because of his 
ill-health and his heavy involvement in debt, was 
finally, In 1837, obliged to give up the hotel and farm 
of which he had so long been the proprietor. Horace 
Fabyan, who had been in the provision business in 
Portland, took possession of the hotel in that year 

^ It appears to have been sometimes called after its proprietor. 
Henry Ward Beecher in his paper, A Time at the White Mountains, 
calls it "the Gibbs House." 

163 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

and kept it with increasing custom for fifteen years. 
Mr. Fabyan, who was destined to give his name to 
the hotel and railroad station of the present day, be- 
came a noted landlord of those days. In 1844, he 
repaired the old Willey House and its stable, and in 
1845, built close to it a hotel, seventy feet by forty, 
which was ready to receive guests the next season. 
Again he extended the field of his activities by taking 
charge, in 1851, of the Conway House at North 
Conway, which was built by Samuel Thom, Nathan- 
iel Abbott, and Hiram C. Abbott in 1850, and is said 
to have been then the finest hotel in the northern 
part of the State. 

Mr. Fabyan made some repairs on the hostelry 
at the Giant's Grave soon after taking possession 
and named it the "Mount Washington House." A 
guest who was there that year has given an interest- 
ing account ^ of the circumstances of hotel-keeping 
in that day. The rate in 1837 was $1.50 a day. The 
price of the trip up Mount Washington was $3. 
This included the services of Mr. Fabyan's cousin, 
Oliver Fabyan, as guide and the use of horses, which 
were taken to a point three miles below the summit. 
A custom, begun by Mr. Crawford, of exhibiting for 
the pleasure of guests the remarkable echo to be 
heard at the Giant's Grave, was a feature of the 
entertainment at the Mount Washington House. 
Mr. Fabyan had a famous tin horn, six feet long, 
which was often sounded, with such a beautiful 
effect that one writer says of it, "We never heard 
mortal sounds to be named with the echoes of Faby- 
^ Mr. W. P. Hill in the White Mountain Echo for August 10, 1895. 

164 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

an's tin horn." In 1845 and 1846, the whole interior 
of the old house was remodeled and repaired and 
many improvements, including new furniture and 
fittings for the house and a considerable amount of 
grading and laying-out of grounds, were made. A 
new building, one hundred and forty feet by forty 
feet and three stories high, was added to the old 
house, providing fifty more rooms and making a 
building two hundred feet long. This was completed 
about 1847-48.^ The fine establishment thus created 
was not, however, destined to accommodate travel- 
ers for more than a few years, for, in the spring of 
1853, the fire fiend again visited this site and the 
Mount Washington House was soon in ruins. 

For nearly a score of years the White Mountain 
House, about three quarters of a mile west, was the 
only place of entertainment in this locality. The 
history of this house is somewhat obscure. There 
was evidently a hotel on this site at an early date, 
for Ethan Allen Crawford in the "History" men- 
tions it a number of times and, as we have seen, has 
much to say of the annoyance to which he was sub- 
jected by a man who bought the place in the autumn 
of 1 83 1 and took possession of it in January of the 
next year. Some time previous to 1843,^ a larger 

^ Mr. Fabyan advertised in Tripp's White Mountain Guide of 1851 
thus: "The House is large and new, having been built only three 
years." The White Mountain and Winnepissiogee Lake Guide-Book of 
1846 speaks of the new building as "nearly finished." 

2 Hosea Ballou, 2d, writing in 1845, says in enumerating and 
locating the dwellings along the route through the Mountains, "Sixth: 
Half a mile farther northwest [i.e., beyond Fabyan's from the Notch 
House] Ethan A. Crawford's, a two-story tavern [Mr. Crawford de- 
scribes it as 'the large three-story building'], built within a few 
years." 

165 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

house seems to have been built here by a Mr. Rose- 
brook, one of the pioneer family, members of which 
had established themselves at what is now Twin 
Mountain. It was this building, apparently, which 
Ethan Allen Crawford hired on his return to the 
Mountains in the year last mentioned and in which 
the remainder of his days was passed. About 1850, 
it was repaired and fitted up by Colonel John H. 
White and was opened the following June.^ It is 
now the oldest hotel in the Mountains. 

Passing now geographically from the rugged and 
impressive region of the Presidential Range and 
Crawford Notch to the milder but no less satisfy- 
ingly beautiful Franconia region, we find that estab- 
lishments for entertaining tourists were early built 
and opened in this part of the Mountains.^ What 
appears to have been the earliest house of entertain- 
ment in the Franconia Notch was situated about one 
thousand feet south of the present Flume House and 
on the same side of the road. It was a small affair,^ 

^ According to an advertisement in Tripp's Guide to the White 
Mountains (1851). This guide-book speaks of it in the text as "a 
new and neat House"; Beckett's Portland, White Mountains & Mon- 
treal Railroad Guide (1853), describes it as "a modern built, neat and 
commodious establishment"; Eastman's The White Mountain Guide- 
Book (1858), says it is "on the site of the Rosebrook House." 

2 I am indebted for a number of facts to Colonel C. H. Greenleaf, 
of the Profile House, the senior hotel-man of the White Mountains, 
who has lived every summer since i860 at this hotel, of which he be- 
came one of the proprietors in 1865. 

'In The White Mountain and Winnepissiogee Lake Guide-Book 
(1846), the compiler, in describing the Pool, says that curiosity is sit- 
uated "about f of a mile from Knight's Tavern." This hostelry is 
also mentioned by name in Charles Lanman's descriptive piece, "The 
Green and White Mountains," written in 1847 and included in his 
Adventures in the Wilds of the United States and British American 
Provinces (1856). 

166 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

evidently opened for the accommodation of the pass- 
ing traveler. 

The first hotel of any consequence erected in this 
region was the Lafayette House, whose site is about 
five hundred feet southeast of the present Profile 
House and on the other side of the highway. It was 
built and opened in 1835,^ as appears from Harriet 
Martineau's account of her excursion to the Fran- 
conia Notch in that year. Its proprietor for a num- 
ber of years was J. L. Gibb, formerly of Littleton 
and later of the Crawford House. 

About 1848,2 the Flume House, the first hotel of 
that name, was built. In 1849, it was bought and 
opened, on June 30, by Richard Taft, a native of 
Barre, Vermont, then proprietor of the Washington 
House at Lowell, Massachusetts, to whom the 
Franconia Notch region in particular and New 
Hampshire in general owes a great debt, for what he 
accomplished in the development of the Mountain 
country as a summer resort and in the introduc- 
tion of city conveniences, methods, and cuisine into 
hotel Hfe in the hills. Says Dr. W. C. Prime: "Mr. 
Taft was a man of exceedingly quiet demeanor, but 
of great ability, foresight, and cautious energy . . . 
a man of the most unswerving probity of character. 

^ Not 1836, as has been heretofore stated. Narrating her experi- 
ences on the day, a rainy one, devoted to this trip she says that her 
party took refuge from one shower in "the soHtary dwelling of the 
pass, called the Lafayette Hotel." " This house," she continues, " had 
been growing in the woods thirteen weeks before, and yet we were far 
from being among its first guests." 

* It must have been open under this name as early as 1848, for 
Oakes's White Mountain Scenery, published in that year, mentions it. 
It was located a few rods to the south of the present hotel. 

167 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

. . . He commanded the respect and confidence of 
all men." When he began hotel-keeping at the 
Flume House, the price of board was $1.50 a day. 
The entire receipts of his first season were only 
eighteen hundred dollars, but, as business increased 
from year to year, Mr. Taft, with characteristic en- 
terprise, acquired the Lafayette House, five miles 
above, and a tract of land around it, and in 1852, 
with his associates, George T. Brown and Ira Coffin, 
began the building of the Profile House. This 
famous hostelry was completed and opened to the 
public in 1853,^ with a capacity of one hundred and 
ten rooms, which was increased by a large addition 
in 1866, the year after Colonel Greenleaf entered 
the firm. From 1865 to 1869, the proprietors were 
Taft, Tyler, and Greenleaf. In the latter year Mr. 
Tyler retired from the firm. In 1872, extensive addi- 
tions and improvements, including the great dining- 
hall, were made by Messrs. Taft and Greenleaf, the 
new firm. The old Flume House having been burned, 
probably a year or two before, the present hotel was 
in that same year erected near its site, the two 
properties being owned in common. The first of the 
group of cottages, which form such a feature of the 
Profile House settlement, was built in 1868. 

Before leaving the early history of hotel-keeping 
in the Franconia Notch, mention should be made 
of the Mount Lafayette House, a small hotel which 
once stood on a spot, sometimes called the "Half- 

1 This is the correct date of the opening, as a letter in the New 
York Herald for July 3, 1853, makes evident, and not 1852, as is 
usually stated. 

168 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

way Place" or " Lafayette Place," two and a quarter 
miles below the Profile House and near the point of 
divergence from the highway of the original bridle 
path up Mount Lafayette. Built probably in the late 
fifties, it was, after a short existence, burned in the 
spring of 1861. Still another hotel situated in this 
region and named after the monarch of the Fran- 
conias was the Mount Lafayette House which stood 
near the junction of the Gale River road with the 
road from the Profile House to Franconia, at the 
bottom of "Three-Mile Hill." It has a particular 
interest to literary folk and others from the associa- 
tion with it of Dr. W. C. Prime, author of "I Go 
A- Fishing" and "Along New England Roads," and 
his sister, the author and entomologist, Mrs. Annie 
Trumbull Slosson. Dr. Prime built and occupied a 
summer cottage in the hotel grounds, which is still 
standing. The hotel property was sold by Mrs. 
Slosson in 1908 to James Smith, of Franconia, and 
was burned to the ground in May, 1911.^ 

Putting on our seven-league boots and jumping 
in our narrative of early hotel-keeping to a beautiful 
valley on the eastern side of the Mountains, we will 
feign ourselves to have landed at Gorham in the 
northern part of that district. At this attractively 
situated mountain village, which is ninety-two miles 
from Portland and to which the railroad made its 
way in 1852, the traveler alighted from the train in 
the fifties and sixties of the last century at the 
White Mountain Station House, which, as this name 

^ I am indebted for this date to Eva M. Aldrich, Librarian of the 
Abbie Greenleaf Library, Franconia. 

169 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

indicates, served the dual purpose of station and 
hotel. This comfortable hostelry, whose name was 
soon changed to the more euphonious one of Alpine 
House, had accommodations for two hundred and 
fifty guests, and was long a popular place of sojourn. 
Gorham became at once, after the coming of the 
railroad, one of the chief Mountain resorts, if it did 
not, indeed, in the days of Starr King hold the pre- 
eminence. The hotel was for many years under the 
efficient landlordship of Colonel John R. Hitchcock, 
who was also a proprietor, as we shall see, of the 
Summit and Tip-Top Houses on Mount Washington, 
as well as a director in the original Mount Wash- 
ington Carriage Road Company. After twenty years 
of existence, however, this famous hotel went the 
way of so many others, falling a prey to the flames 
in October, 1872. This disaster marked the passing 
of Gorham 's supremacy as a resort. A second 
Alpine House was built in 1876. This was closed 
in November, 1905, and was subsequently moved 
across the street and made a part of the present 
Mount Madison House, which is a commercial 
hotel, open all the year round, as well as one used 
as a place of summer sojourn. 

Traveling now in our imaginary hotel tour of the 
White Mountains eight miles to the southward, to 
the picturesque location in the valley of the Peabody 
River known as the "Glen," we find that the first 
public house on that site was begun in 1852 by John 
Bellows. It was not completed in time for the season 
of that year, but a few guests were entertained. 
Probably still in an unfinished state, this modest 

170 




THE OLD PROFILE HOUSE, OPENED 1S53, CLOSED 1905 








THE FLUME HOUSE 
An Old View showing the House when Smaller than at Present 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

tavern, which was on the stage-road from Gor- 
ham to North Conway, was bought by Mr. J. M. 
Thompson, who changed its name to the Glen 
House, and was indefatigable in developing the 
property and making the region popular by building 
paths to the waterfalls and other points of interest, 
and even one up Mount Washington. Unfortunately, 
he was drowned in the Peabody River in October, 
1869, when trying to prevent the destruction of his 
mill by a flood which followed an autumnal storm of 
exceptional severity. A few years after the lamented 
death of Landlord Thompson, the hotel passed into 
the hands of the brothers Milliken, under whose 
skillful management it attained great development 
and popularity, only to meet, after years of success, 
with repeated disaster, and apparently to come to an 
end as a large enterprise. The story of this mingled 
prosperity and adversity will, however, be deferred 
to a later chapter. 

Continuing our tour, let us go farther southward 
on the stage-road passing the Glen House, and we 
shall come, after a ride of a dozen miles, to the little 
village which commemorates in this region the 
victor of New Orleans. 

Jackson was late in coming to its own as a sum- 
mer resort, and this quiet hamlet in a secluded glen 
owed its discovery as a center of landscape beauties 
to the artists. The pioneer painters came as early 
as 1847. Hotel-keeping began with the opening of 
the Jackson Falls House in 1858.^ The Iron Moun- 
tain House was opened in 1861 and was burned in 

^ It was rebuilt and enlarged in 1886. 
171 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

1877; a new house of the same name first received 
guests in the season of 1885. The year 1876 was the 
opening year of the Glen ElHs House. In the early 
days Cole, Durand, Judge Story and Daniel Web- 
ster were visitors to Jackson. It is related that 
board was then $2 a week, the landlady doing the 
cooking and the landlord serving the frugal meals. 
Now, Jackson is a place of many hotels and board- 
ing-houses, as well as of summer cottages in goodly 
number. Right in the heart of the village, near the 
Wildcat River, is the Wentworth Hall, which re- 
produces the picturesque architecture of an English 
mansion of Queen Anne's time. The Thorn Moun- 
tain House, a part of the Wentworth Hall estab- 
lishment, was opened on July 12, 1869, by General 
M. C. Wentworth, with twenty-two rooms. In 1914, 
the establishment consisted of these two houses and 
thirty-one other buildings, including a group of at- 
tractive cottages.^ Gray's Inn has long been a lead- 
ing hotel of Jackson. Its recent history is of especial 
interest. The first hotel of this name was burned in 
1902. A new one was soon begun and was nearly 
completed, when it, too, went up in smoke in the 
winter of 1903. Nothing daunted. Landlord Gray, 
who was his own architect and builder, at once 
commenced to build another hotel. This time noth- 
ing untoward happened and a new and commodi- 
ous Gray's Inn was opened the week of August 15, 
1904. Open in winter as well as in summer, this 
hostelry was a popular place of sojourn at both sea- 

^ I am indebted to the courtesy of the late General Wentworth for 
information as to his establishment. 

172 



THE EARLY HOTELS 

sons. But after about a dozen years of prosperity, 
Landlord Gray again met witli adversity, for on 
February 21, 1916, the inn, together with its casino, 
was totally destroyed by fire. Fortunately, the one 
hundred and fifty guests all escaped without injury. 

Let us conclude this chapter by taking a broad 
jump in a southwesterly direction to the extreme 
southern limit of the White Mountain region, — to 
the town of Plymouth, to be specific in our destina- 
tion. In the days of its political importance and 
before the advent of the summer visitor, there was, 
of course, a transient population of considerable 
number in the village from time to time, but espe- 
cially when the county court was in session. From 
soon after the settlement a tavern was in existence, 
conducted successively by Colonel David Webster 
and his son, Colonel William. In 1841, Denison R. 
Burnham purchased the popular and historic old 
Webster Tavern, built an addition, and changed the 
name of the inn to that of Pemigewasset House, a 
name which has survived a number of fires and is 
still retained. Under Mr. Burnham's able manage- 
ment the hotel became a popular one, and, after the 
coming of the railroad, business increased so that 
some time in the early fifties another addition was 
made and again later still another.^ 

This old hostelry was destroyed by fire in 1862, 
and the land was then sold to the railroad company, 
which immediately erected, in 1863, another hotel 
of the same name. This was the house in which 

^ I am indebted for information about her father's hotel to the 
late Abbie Burnham Greenleaf. 

173 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Hawthorne died the next year. It was built on a 
hillside and fronted on the village street, with which 
its main floor was on a level, while in the rear was a 
lower floor in which was the railroad station. Large, 
commodious, and well-kept, it was long a popular 
place of resort. This famous old house was burned 
in 1908 and has been replaced by a fine modern 
hotel, the New Pemigewasset House, which is sit- 
uated a short distance from the old location and 
which was opened July i, 1913. 



VIII 

THE POETS AND PAINTERS IN THE WHITE HILLS 

As is to be expected, the natural beauties of the 
White Mountains, their lofty summits, their bare 
or tree-clad slopes or crags, their streams, their cas- 
cades, their lakes, and their scenic curiosities, and 
even their few legends, have been sources of inspi- 
ration to a multitude of poets and verse-makers. 
Thus the pleasure afforded by some of the best 
nature poetry in American literature is another 
perennial enjoyment which we owe to the Crystal 
Hills. To this additional possession of White 
Mountain lovers, many sons and daughters of New 
Hampshire, whether they be children who have 
remained at home or children who have pitched 
their tent permanently elsewhere, have contributed 
by singing the glories of these hills in verse of greater 
or less merit. Among such represented in Eugene 
R. Musgrove's well-chosen anthology, "The White 
Hills in Poetry," are George Waldo Browne, James 
T. Fields, Charles James Fox, George Bancroft 
Griffith, Edward Augustus Jenks, Fanny Runnells 
Poole, and Celia Thaxter. The most notable singer 
by far in this connection is, undoubtedly, Edna Dean 
Proctor, who has made her native hills the theme of 
numerous poems of high excellence. 

Preeminently, however, the poet of the White 
Hills is a native of the sister Commonwealth of 

175 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Massachusetts, a poet whose inspiration came from 
summer acquaintance with them, John Greenleaf 
Whittier. He and his intimate friend and literary 
associate, Lucy Larcom, were both ardent lovers of 
the New Hampshire country and frequent sojourn- 
ers among the Mountains or in the bordering lake- 
land, and both have written much verse about this 
beautiful region. But Whittier only, Mr. Musgrove 
has pointed out, has given us a series of pictures of 
this mountain land and has enriched American 
poetry with exquisite descriptions of New Hamp- 
shire scenery. 

The Quaker poet's first poem having to do with 
the region is one published under the title, "The 
White Mountains," in his earliest book, "Legends 
of New England in Prose and Verse," which ap- 
peared at Hartford, Connecticut, in February, 1831. 
This short piece of verse, which seems to have been 
composed before the poet knew the Mountains by 
visual experience, is concerned with the Indian 
belief that Mount Washington was the abode of 
powerful spirits, whose voices were heard in the 
pauses of the tempests, and with the passing of 
ancient conditions.^ 

Whittier's first recorded visit to the region he was 
later to make one of his summer homes was for a 
quite different purpose. Through his interest in the 
anti-slavery cause and his literary activity in its 
behalf, the poet had attracted the attention of that 

^ With the title "Mount Agiochook" substituted for its original 
one, the poem was printed in the author's complete works, but was 
finally relegated to an appendix. 

176 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

most brilliant of early anti-slavery editors, Nathaniel 
Peabody Rogers. ^ One of the first letters of approval 
and encouragement Whittier received after publish- 
ing, in 1833, the pamphlet" Justice and Expediency," 
in favor of immediate emancipation, was from 
Rogers, who then invited the young writer to visit 
his mountain home on the banks of the Pemige- 
wasset in Plymouth. Their personal acquaintance 
was first made two years afterwards, when the in- 
vitation was accepted by Whittier. He was accom- 
panied on this journey by the eloquent English 
reformer, George Thompson, who in response to 
Garrison's invitation had come to this country to 
deliver anti-slavery addresses and whom the poet 
had been hiding from the mobs in the seclusion of 
his East Haverhill home. "We drove up the beauti- 
ful valley of the White Mountain tributary of the 

1 Rogers, in 1838, gave up his law practice at Plymouth and left 
his native valley to reside at Concord for the purpose of editing The 
Herald of Freedom, an anti-slavery paper established a few years be- 
fore. As a newspaper writer he had few, if any, equals in his day. 
He used to write for the New York Tribune under the signature "The 
Old Man of the Mountain." "His descriptions of natural scenery," 
says Whittier in his "portrait" of his friend, "glow with life. One 
can almost see the sunset light flooding the Franconia Notch, and 
glorifying the peaks of Moosehillock, and hear the murmur of the 
west wind in the pines, and the light, liquid voice of Pemigewasset 
sounding up from its rocky channel, through its green hem of maples, 
while reading them." His last visit to his old home was in the autumn 
of 1845. In a familiar letter to a friend he penned a beautiful descrip- 
tion of his native town as seen in what was to be his farewell view of 
it. His health, never robust, gradually failed for some time previous 
to his death. Needing more repose and quiet than his duties as editor 
permitted him to enjoy, he bought a small and pleasant farm in his 
loved Pemigewasset Valley, in the hope that he might there recuper- 
ate his wasted energies. But he was not destined to enjoy this asylum, 
for his death occurred shortly afterward, in October, 1846. His 
family, however, occupied it for some years. 

177 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Merrimac," writes Whittier, "and, just as a glorious 
sunset was steeping river, valley, and mountain in 
its hues of heaven, were welcomed to the pleasant 
home and family circle of our friend Rogers." With 
these friends they spent "two delightful evenings." 

Early in the forties, apparently, Whittier made a 
journey through the heart of the Notch in a stage- 
coach, which leisurely mode of traveling he enjoyed 
greatly, and also ascended "old Agioochook." It 
had as its literary fruit the prologue of "The Bridal 
of Pennacook," the opening of which is a glorified 
itinerary. This poem appeared in 1844. 

The poet was again in the Mountain region in the 
summer of 1849, sojourning there several weeks at 
that time. Some years afterward he again visited 
the Rogers family, this time for a week, before they 
left their home near Plymouth for the West. This 
was probably in 1853. 

Three years later he published in The National 
Era the poem "Mary Garvin," whose prologue, be- 
ginning, "From the heart of Waumbek Methna, 
from the lake that never fails," deals descriptively 
with the Saco River, near the mouth of which the 
scene of the poem is laid. 

In the spring of 1865, Whittier came to Campton, 
where his friends James T. and Annie Fields were 
then making their place of summer sojourn, board- 
ing at Selden C. Willey's farm, and there the poem 
"Franconia from the Pemigewasset," constituting 
the first of his "Mountain Pictures," was expanded 
and modified from the first stanza composed at 
Lovewell's Pond in Fryeburg, Maine. 

178 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

Soon after the close of the Civil War, the poet of 
freedom seems to have made his first trip to the 
locaHty in the White Mountain region which was to 
become his favorite mountain retreat and in which 
to-day his name is chiefly commemorated geographi- 
cally. The success of "Snow-Bound" had rendered 
him not only pecuniarily independent and able to 
afford many added comforts and luxuries, but also 
had given him a firm place in the hearts of his coun- 
trymen. The days of struggle and patient endurance 
of adversity were over. In the summer of 1867, he 
made a stay at the Bearcamp River House in West 
Ossipee. This "quiet, old-fashioned inn, beautifully 
located, neat as possible, large rooms, nice beds, and 
good, wholesome table," was situated near the banks 
of the picturesque stream from which it got its 
name and only a few hundred yards from the railway 
station. In early days the public house on this site 
had been known as "Ames's Tavern," and after- 
wards as "Banks's Hotel," and the fact that among 
its frequenters in the primitive days were Starr 
King and the artists, George Inness, George L. 
Brown, and Benjamin Champney, is ample testi- 
mony to the satisfying qualities of the views, in 
which Chocorua is the dominating object, and of the 
environing scenes. 

Amid such surroundings the inspiration came to 
Whittier to write an idyl of New England farm life, 
a companion summer piece to his winter idyl, 
"Snow-Bound," and so here in part was composed 
the charming poem "Among the Hills." His first 
thought was to call this poem, which combines a 

179 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

tender and romantic love-story with a faithful por- 
trayal of rural scenes, "A Summer Idyl," but when 
it appeared in its first form, in the Atlantic Monthly 
for January, 1868, it was entitled "The Wife: an 
Idyl of Bearcamp Water." Before the poem ap- 
peared in the volume to which it gave the title early 
in 1869, the prelude had been expanded and so 
changed in tenor as to be a new poem and the out- 
lines of the story filled out. This working-over and 
"blossoming-out" took place during that summer. 
For several summers and autumns from 1875 on, 
Whittier spent a number of weeks at the Bearcamp 
River House, enjoying greatly his sojourns there be- 
cause of the modest comfort, the pleasant associa- 
tions, and the beautiful view. Chocorua he regarded 
as the most beautiful and striking of all the New 
Hampshire hills, and the location of the hotel he 
esteemed one of the most picturesque situations in 
the State. Besides "Among the Hills," several 
other poems, among them "Sunset on the Bear- 
camp," and "Voyage of the Jettie," were written at 
this, Whittier's "Wayside Inn," and celebrate the 
beauties of the region. The hotel was sometimes 
nearly filled with relatives and friends of the poet 
and these reunions were occasions full of enjoyment 
to him. He could not accompany his friends on their 
mountain-climbs — he did not care to ascend moun- 
tains for the prospect they afford — and on their 
drives, but he liked greatly to hear the reports of 
adventures brought to him by the younger members 
of his party. ^ He enjoyed also being quiet and alone. 

^ The following anecdote, related by Mr. Pickard in Whittier-Land, 

180 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

Rarely was a transient guest invited to join the 
poet's circle, as he was usually under some constraint 
in the presence of a stranger. 

In the summer and autumn of 1875, Lucy Larcom 
and he were engaged together here in the compila- 
tion of "Songs of Three Centuries," but this work 
"was not allowed to interfere seriously with the 
main object of a summer outing, rest and recrea- 
tion," says his biographer. 

Five years later the hotel was burned down, 
"much to my regret," he writes to Marshall P. 
Hall in May, 1881, in the same letter expressing a 
hope that another house will be built on its site. 

In the summer of the year last named, Whittier 
spent several weeks at Intervale with his cousins, 
Joseph and Gertrude W. Cartland, who were his 
summer companions the remaining twelve years of 
his life. He much enjoyed the quiet, restful meadow 

exhibits the poet's keen enjoyment of fun and his ability to unbend 
even to jollity and to the production of verse written in a rollicking 
vein. One day in September, 1876, a party of seven of Whittier's 
friends climbed Chocorua under the guidance of the Knox brothers, 
two young farmers and bear-hunters of West Ossipee, camping for the 
night on the mountain near some bear-traps. The young ladies re- 
ported to the poet the hearing of the growling of the bears in the 
night and other blood-curdling incidents. Shortly afterward the 
Knox brothers gave a husking-bee at their barn, at which Whittier 
and the members of his party were present. Whittier wrote a poem, 
entitled "How They Climbed Chocorua," for the occasion, and in- 
duced Lucy Larcom to read it as the production of an unknown author. 
These humorous stanzas, with their references to the incidents of the 
excursion and their personal mentions of the climbers, were re- 
ceived with great delight. The next evening Miss Larcom read to the 
party gathered round the fireside at the inn a humorous poem, en- 
titled "To the Unknown and Absent Author of 'How They CHmbed 
Chocorua,' " in which the poet was allege^ to have been caught by 
the coat-tails in one of the bear-traps on the mountain. 

181 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

views and the noble distant mountain prospects of 
this charming spot. He loved to watch the snow- 
streaks on Mount Washington, which he once 
expressed the wish he might see all covered with 
snow as in winter. The beautiful pine woods near 
the hotel became a favorite resort of the poet, where 
he passed a part of nearly every day, often with a 
group of friends in the unconventional social inter- 
course he so highly prized. 

Such are the outlines of the poet's connection 
with the White Mountains. To-day the visitor to 
the Ossipee region finds the northwest summit of 
the Ossipee Range bearing, at Sweetser's suggestion, 
the name of " Whittier Peak," or " Mount Whittier." 
The railroad station of West Ossipee has recently 
become Mount Whittier, while in the near vicinity 
is a hamlet also named in the poet's honor. 

The lifelong friendship of Lucy Larcom with 
Whittier began in 1844,^ during his residence in 
Lowell, where she was then employed in the mills 
and had been brought into notice as one of the 
leading contributors to the Lowell Offering, that 
famous magazine which attracted so much atten- 
tion as a successful literary venture by factory 
operatives. Whittier assisted and encouraged her 
in her literary work and she in turn assisted him 
not only in compiling "Songs of Three Centuries," 
but in other editorial work.^ She became, after her 

^ So Pickard, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier; Daniel 
Dulany Addison's Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary, states that 
it was in 1843 that she first met Mr. Whittier. 

^ First in 187 1 in the compilation of "Child Life: a Collection of 
Poems." 

182 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

return from the West in 1853, his sister Elizabeth's 
dearest friend, and all his remaining life, and par- 
ticularly after Elizabeth's death, the elder poet was 
ever thoughtful for her welfare. Kindred souls as 
they were, the two poets were much in each other's 
society, and many letters passed between them. 

Early in the sixties, — to be exact, in August, 
1861, — Miss Larcom began to be a regular summer 
sojourner among the hills of New Hampshire, a 
practice which had as one result the writing of many 
beautiful poems. Her usual place of resort at first 
was Campton, where, like the Fieldses, she boarded 
at Selden C. Willey's.^ There "Hills in Mist," "My 
Mountain," "Valley Peak," and other poems were 
composed. Other retreats of Miss Larcom in the 
White Mountains, or the vicinity, were Ossipee 
Park, West Ossipee, Sandwich, Berlin Falls, Beth- 
lehem, Mount Moosilauke, Center Harbor, and 
Bethel (in Maine) . Even a mere enumeration of some 
others of her White Mountain poems, with mention 
of the places and dates of their composition, not only 
makes amply evident her wide and long acquaintance 
with the region, but suggests her ardent love of it. 
"Up the Androscoggin" was written at Berlin Falls 
in 1878; "Asleep on the Summit," on Mount Wash- 
ington, in August, 1877; "Clouds on Whiteface," 
at North Sandwich; "From the Hills," on Mount 

^ In 1867, writing to Jean Ingelow, she says, "To me there is rest 
and strength, and aspiration and exultation, among the mountains. 
They are nearly a day's journey from us, — the White Mountains, — 
but I will go, and get a glimpse and a breath of their glory, once a 
year, always. ... I usually stop at a village on the banks of the Pemige- 
wasset, a small silvery river that flows from the Notch Mountains. . . . 
But I must not go on about the mountains, or I shall never stop." 

183 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Moosilauke, 1891; " Garfield's Burial Day," ascend- 
ing Mount Washington, September 26, 1881; and 
"A Mountain Resurrection," at North Sandwich, in 
1863. Other poems which owe their inspiration to 
the monarch of the hills are, "In a Cloud-Rift," 
"Looking Down," and "The Summit-Flower." 
"Mountaineer's Prayer" was written on the sum- 
mit of Moosilauke, September 7, 1892, the day after 
Whittier's death. 

The hills gave Miss Larcom rest and the beauty 
of the views with their suggestions gave her inspira- 
tion for her work. Each year she tried to visit the 
various points she especially loved. Bethel charmed 
her with its majestic elms and its view of the An- 
droscoggin and the distant mountains. At Russell's 
Riverside Cottage, where she was ever welcome, she 
frequently stayed, and on the ledge behind the house 
there is a little glen, in which she used to sit and 
read, known as " Miss Larcom's Retreat." ^ Bethle- 
hem gave her relief from hay-fever, ^ and was al- 
ways "the beautiful." From these places and from 
Moosilauke, her favorite summit, she frequently 
wrote charming letters to the Portland Transcript. 

On the mountain just named parts of the last two 
summers of her life, 1891 and 1892, were spent. It 
was there that the news of Whittier's death came to 

* "On the Ledge," written in September, 1879, celebrates the 
beauty of this "shelter and outlook." 

2 In October, 1885, she writes to her friend Mrs. Spalding, " I have 
had my 'outing' at Bethlehem; I went there hardly able to sit up 
during the journey, but gained strength at once, and am well now. 
... I stayed there more than four weeks, and enjoyed it much. Mr. 
Howells and family were at the next house, and I saw them several 
times." 

184 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

her. She was not long to survive her old friend and 
another dear friend, Phillips Brooks, for in April, 
1893, she passed away, a victim of heart disease. 

Longfellow's acquaintance with the region of the 
White Hills began early and, from a literary stand- 
point, promisingly. Born in a city from which they 
are in clear weather to be plainly seen, he became 
interested in them and visited them as a young man, 
but this acquaintance was not kept up. After he 
became established as professor at Cambridge, at 
any rate, he preferred the seashore to the Moun- 
tains, maintaining for many years a summer home 
at Nahant. Toward the close of his life, in 1880, he 
made a visit to the region, staying at the Stag and 
Hounds in West Campton. While there a journey 
was made to Mad River, which bore fruit poetically 
in the spirited lyric of this name, one of his last 
poems, ^ and his best White Mountain poem. 

Slight as is, taken altogether, his association with 
this region, it has nevertheless a few points of inter- 
est worth a brief chronicling. 

As I have mentioned when dealing with the battle 
of Lovewell's Pond, that fight inspired the first 
printed poem, so far as is known, of the youthful 
Longfellow. The four stanzas, with their echoes of 
Moore and of Scott, appeared over the signature 
"Henry" in the Poet's Corner of the Portland 
Gazette, November 17, 1820, when the boy was 
not yet fourteen years old. Five years later he re- 
curred to the same theme, writing an ode for the 

^ It was written in January, 1882, and appeared in the Atlantic 
Monthly for May of that year. 

185 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

commemoration at Fryeburg of Lovewell's fight. 
Another poem belonging to this year 1825, and 
now relegated, like the two just referred to, to 
an appendix of "Juvenile Poems" is "Jeckoyva," ^ 
which owes its conception to the Chocorua legend. 
It has a version of the story of the chief's death for 
its subject. 

Yet another poem written in this his senior year 
at Bowdoin relates to the Mountains. This is the 
descriptive and didactic poem, "Sunrise on the 
Hills," which, written in his room at college, em- 
bodies reminiscently the moving sights and sounds 
of nature and human life observed on the occasion 
of a visit to the summit of Mount Kearsarge, near 
North Conway. This last poem, with a number of 
others written during his college life, the poet re- 
tained in a group of "Earlier Poems" in his com- 
plete works. Thus, "Sunrise on the Hills" and 
"Mad River," of more than a half-century later, 
represent the entire extent, so far as his own approval 
goes, of this poet's permanent literary association 
with the region. 

Bryant, New England's greatest nature poet, paid 
a visit to the White Mountains in the summer of 
1847. No poems ensued from this his first, and 
apparently also his last, exploration of these hills, 
which he had before seen only from a distance. The 

^ Jeckoyva is, of course, a variant of Chocorua. "Mount Jeck- 
oyva," says the poet in an introductory note, "is near the White 
Hills." The poem appeared in the United States Literary Gazette for 
August I, 1825. To this semi-monthly periodical, established in 1824 
and first edited by Theophilus Parsons, afterwards a distinguished 
jurist, Longfellow was a regular contributor. 

186 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

summer trip into New England, of which this excur- 
sion to the Mountains was a part, was undertaken 
at a time in his Hfe when the editor of the Evening 
Post was busily engaged in the political discussions 
of the day and consequently found almost no time 
for writing verse. This circumstance doubtless ac- 
counts in large measure for the failure of his muse 
to be inspired by the grand and beautiful scenery 
amidst which he found himself during his brief so- 
journ in the White Hills. 

He approached the Mountains by way of Augusta, 
whither he had come from Portland. An ascent of 
Mount Washington and a stay of a few days in the 
Franconia Notch were the chief features of his visit. 

Fortunately, his impressions of the Mountains 
have been preserved for us by his biographer. As 
the passage is less familiar than other descriptive 
ones, we may well look for a moment with the poet's 
eye. 

The scenery of these mountains has not been sufficiently 
praised [he wrote]. But for the glaciers, but for the peaks 
white with perpetual snow, it would be scarcely worth 
while to see Switzerland after seeing the White Moun- 
tains. The depth of the valleys, the steepness of the 
mountain-sides, the variety of aspect shown by their 
summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamed with the 
open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain 
region seen north and south of us, gleaming with many 
lakes, filled me with surprise and astonishment. Imagine 
the forests to be shorn from half the broad declivities — 
imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turf and 
foot-paths leading from one to the other, and herds and 
flocks browsing, and you have Switzerland before you. 
I admit, however, that these accessories add to the va- 

187 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

riety and interest of the landscape, and perhaps heighten 
the idea of its vastness. 

I have been told, however, that the White Mountains 
in autumn present an aspect more glorious than even the 
splendors of the perpetual ice of the Alps. All this mighty 
multitude of mountains, rising from valleys filled with 
dense forests, have then put on their hues of gold and 
scarlet, and, seen more distinctly on account of their 
brightness of color, seem to tower higher in the clear 
blue of the sky. At that season of the year they are little 
visited, and only awaken the wonder of the occasional 
traveller. 

It is not necessary to ascend Mount Washington to 
enjoy the finest views. Some of the lower peaks offer 
grander though not so extensive ones; the height of the 
main summit seems to diminish the size of the objects 
beheld from it. The sense of solitude and immensity is, 
however, most strongly felt on that great cone, over- 
looking all the rest, and formed of loose rocks, which 
seem as if broken into fragments by the power which 
upheaved these ridges from the depths of the earth 
below. 

So many have been the landscape artists who have 
made occasional or frequent sojourns for longer or 
shorter periods in the White Mountains, and who 
have plied the instruments of their profession to 
good purpose there, that, if the records of their stays 
in the region had been kept and a catalogue of the 
pictures that were the outward and visible signs 
of their communion with the natural beauty and 
grandeur of their surroundings could be compiled, a 
sizable volume would be required to contain such 
material. But such a record, which might be styled 
the "art history" of the White Mountains, cannot 
be prepared or, at any rate, can be only very in- 

i88 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

adequately set forth, for in most cases the artists' 
visits to this region were but episodes in busy 
careers. In many cases, indeed, the fact of such per- 
sonal association with the Mountains is borne wit- 
ness to solely by some picture which reproduces a 
scene or prospect to which it owed its inspiration, 
or, at most, by a few of such pictures. Often, again, 
the only accessible record of such association that 
apparently exists is the mere statement that such 
and such an artist frequented a particular locality, 
set down incidentally in a guide-book or in a maga- 
zine article on the place. 

As to the paintings themselves, they are so thor- 
oughly and so widely distributed among the collec- 
tions of individuals and of the smaller public gal- 
leries, few being in the great galleries of the country, 
that the preparation of a respectable, not to say ade- 
quate, list of White Mountain paintings would be 
well-nigh an impossibility. 

A chronicle of the region would, however, be sadly 
deficient without some brief record, or at least men- 
tion, of the painters who have done so much to 
spread abroad a knowledge of its scenic attractions. 
Furthermore, so intimate, indeed, was the associa- 
tion with the White Mountains of the earlier Ameri- 
can landscape artists, who constitute our first really 
native school, that they are sometimes called collec- 
tively the "White Mountain School." More usually, 
however, from the circumstance that so much of 
their work depicts the river and mountain scenery of 
eastern New York, they are known as the "Hudson 
River School." 

189 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Such, then, being the importance of the White 
Mountains in American art, and such, as I have out- 
lined, being the difficulties, especially for a layman, 
in acquiring knowledge of the artists* personal con- 
tact with the region and of the pictures that resulted 
therefrom, I approach the treatment of the subject 
with considerable hesitation. I shall have, therefore, 
to content myself with setting down such informa- 
tion, meager as it is, as I have been able to gather 
from various sources, not with the thought that what 
I shall present has any pretense to completeness or 
adequacy, but with quite the contrary mental atti- 
tude toward it, namely, one of apology for being 
unable to do more than merely touch upon some of 
the more readily accessible bits of information relat- 
ing to the subject. 

Mr. Crawford, in his "History," notes the visit of 
a painter to the Mountains as early as July, 1824, 
"who took some beautiful sketches of the hills and 
likewise of the Notch," but we are not informed as 
to his name. 

Not long after this pioneer visit of an unnamed 
artist, two of the earliest and most noted of American 
landscapists, Thomas Doughty and Thomas Cole, 
found their way thither, and they have had many 
successors in discovering and depicting with the 
brush the beauties of the region. 

Of the connection with the Mountains of the 
latter, who made his summer home chiefly in the 
Catskills, and who is regarded as one of the fathers 
of the Hudson River School, we are fortunate in 
having some record, for his own account of his first 

190 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

visit to the White Mountains has been preserved. 
It was in the autumn of 1828, that with a friend, 
Henry Cheeves Pratt, Cole explored the region, 
making a tour which was to result in a number of 
striking pictures. Early in October, they climbed 
Chocorua, which early became and has remained the 
favorite mountain of the painters, as it has been 
also of the poets. This ascent was ''both perilous 
and difficult" on account of the windfalls, consisting 
of prostrate tall pines and gnarled birches heaped to- 
gether in wild confusion. But the artists felt them- 
selves amply rewarded by the "mighty and sublime" 
prospects which opened on their vision. "With all 
its beauty the scene was," says Cole, "too extended 
and map-like for the canvas." "It was not for 
sketches," he continues, "that I ascended Chocorua, 
but for thoughts; and for these this was truly the 
region." 

After remaining several hours on the peak, they 
descended to the village, arriving after dark. On 
October 6, the two footed it, with their baggage 
on their backs, through the Crawford Notch. Cole 
notes that the distance is twelve miles and that there 
is not a house except the deserted Willey House, of 
whose location he says, "It is impossible to give a 
true picture of this desolate and savage spot." They 
paused, however, long enough to make some 
sketches before proceeding up the gorge. 

Two days later. Cole went alone, Pratt having 
left him, to Franconia "through the Breton woods 
on the bank of the Ammonoosuck." From Fran- 
conia he walked through the Franconia Notch, hav- 

191 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ing set off with the expectation of the coach's over- 
taking him, but he reached the southern end of the 
Notch some time before it arrived there. His de- 
scription of the Notch and of his walk is well worth 
giving, particularly noteworthy being his account of 
the impression the Great Stone Face made upon 
him: — 

There is nothing of the desolate grandeur of the other 
Notch. The elements do not seem to have chosen this for 
a battle-ground, and the hoar mountains do not appear 
wrinkled by recent convulsions. One of the two lakes, 
you here meet with, is presided over by the Old Man of 
the Mountains [sic], as the people about here call it. . . . 
The perfect repose of these waters, and the unbroken 
silence reigning through the whole region, made the scene 
peculiarly impressive and sublime: indeed, there was an 
awfulness in the deep solitude, pent up within the great 
precipices, that was painful. While there was a pleasure 
in the discovery, a childish fear came over me that drove 
me away: the bold and horrid features, that bent their 
severe expression upon me, were too dreadful to look upon 
in my loneliness: I could not feel happy in their com- 
munion, nor take them to my heart as my companions. 
... In spite of a timid excitement, and the prospect of a 
shower, I sketched several trees by the road-side. In the 
course of my walk, I came to a bark-covered hut, in the 
midst of burnt trees, with a swarm of unwashed, un- 
combed, but healthy-looking children, who ran out to 
stare with amazement at the passing stranger. I reached, 
at length, a better-looking abode, where the horses of the 
coach were to be exchanged, and awaited its arrival. 
From the door I made a sketch of the mountains, to the 
surprise and admiration of the people of the house, who 
put me down for a surveyor making a map. The long- 
looked-for coach at last came down, and gave me a 
pleasant ride into Plymouth. 

192 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

The following winter, Cole produced at least two 
spirited pictures of Chocorua, his "Autumn Scene — 
Corway Peak" and his " The Death of Chocorua," 
the former of which is now in the gallery of the New 
York Historical Society, and the latter of which be- 
came widely known through the "very much ad- 
mired" steel engraving of it by George W. Hatch. 
During this winter or the following one, he painted 
his "White Mountains," purchased for the Wads- 
worth Athenaeum, Hartford, a "View near Conway," 
exhibited in 1830 at the Royal Academy in London, 
and a "View from Mount Washington." 

Cole was again in this region, we learn from a 
letter, for several weeks in the summer of 1839. 
Not only did he paint actual reproductions of White 
Mountain scenes, but he used ideas and material 
acquired here in pictures that were not localized 
views. One of his most attractive paintings, "The 
Hunter's Return," for instance, is a composition, 
but one noble mountain in the background is copied 
from a spur of the White Hills. 

Besides being a painter of note. Cole not seldom 
meditated the thankless Muse, and the White Moun- 
tains were a source of inspiration in this phase of his 
creative activity. During the year 1835, he found 
leisure to compose a dramatic poem, in twelve parts, 
called "The Spirits of the Wilderness," the scene of 
which is laid among the Mountains. This work, 
declared by his biographer to be "of singular 
originality, and much poetic power and beauty," 
was, in the spring of 1837, rewritten and "prepared 
in a measure for publication." 

193 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Mr. Pratt also recorded his impressions of his trip 
through the Notch, in his "View of the White 
Mountains after the Late Slide," which was en- 
graved by V. Balch for The Token, in 1828. 

I have found almost no record of Doughty's 
sketching among the Mountains. He must, how- 
ever, have visited the Crawford Notch in or about 
the early thirties, for an engraving by George B. 
Ellis of a drawing by him of ''The Silver Cascade" 
was published in The Token for 1835, ^^^ ^.n engrav- 
ing, by F. J. Havell, of his painting of the same 
waterfall appears in N. P. Willis's "American 
Scenery." 

One of the fathers of American landscape and 
leaders of the Hudson River School, A. B. Durand, 
who was also one of the original members of the 
National Academy of Design, painted a number 
of pleasing White Mountain pictures. In 1857, 
he produced for Mr. R. L. Stuart the large work 
"White Mountain Scenery, Franconia Notch," now 
in the Stuart Room of the Galleries of the New York 
Public Library. It is recorded that the purchaser 
was so pleased with the picture that he made the 
amount of the check given in payment for it larger 
than he had agreed to pay. In the following year, 
Durand sojourned for weeks in the summer in North 
Conway and West Campton. "New Hampshire 
Scenery" was painted for Mr. A. A. Low in that 
year, and the same year Mr. Stuart purchased from 
the artist the smaller canvas "Franconia, White 
Mountains," also now in the New York Public Li- 
brary. His "On the Pemigewassett " was purchased 

194 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

by a citizen of Brooklyn. In 1876, he painted 
"Sunset on Chocorua," which was purchased by a 
Hoboken patron of art. 

Another eminent landscapist who has connected 
himself with the White Mountains is George Loring 
Brown, known, from his skill as a copyist of Claude 
Lorraine, as the "American Claude." After a long 
residence abroad, he returned in i860 to his native 
land and devoted himself in part to executing views 
of American scenery. One of his places of sojourn 
while sketching in the Mountains was, on the 
authority of Mr. Sweetser, Wilson's farm, two miles 
from Jackson, where noble and extended views are 
to be had. His most noted White Mountain picture, 
"The Crown of New England," was painted in 186 1, 
and gives the view of Mount Washington as seen 
from the slope below the road, west of the old Mount 
Adams House at Jefiferson Highlands. It was pur- 
chased by the Prince of Wales (Edward VII) during 
his visit to the United States, and hangs in the 
gallery of Windsor Castle. 

One of our principal sources of information con- 
cerning artists who frequented the White Moun- 
tains in the early days is the "Sixty Years' Memo- 
ries of Art and Artists" ^ of Benjamin Champney, 
who, at his death at the age of ninety in December, 
1907, was the oldest and most beloved of North 
Conway's summer residents and who was the pio- 
neer among the artists who have made the gran- 
deur and beauty of that region's scenery known. 

Mr. Champney first visited his future summer 

* Published in 1900 at Woburn, Massachusetts, his winter home. 

195 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

home in 1838, in company with "a young artist 
friend," the imaginations of the two students having 
been so "inflamed" by the study of a series of illus- 
trations drawn by an English artist, W. H. Bartlett, 
and engraved in London for N. P. Willis's "Ameri- 
can Scenery," published there in 1838-39, that they 
devoted their first sketching trip to a study of the 
same scenery. 

After some years of study in Europe, beginning 
in 1 84 1, where he became intimate with other art 
students who were to associate themselves in later 
years with White Mountain scenes, and among 
whom were A. B. Durand, J. W. Casilear, and J. F. 
Kensett, Mr. Champney returned to America to 
practice his profession of landscape artist. As the 
result of an agreement with Kensett to go on a 
sketching trip to the White Mountains, Champney 
and Kensett went in the summer of 1850 to Frye- 
burg. Casilear, having been sent for to join them, 
did so, and the three friends for six weeks "reveled 
in the beauty" of the Saco Valley. Having made a 
reconnaissance of North Conway, they decided to 
go there at once. They had interviewed Landlord 
Thompson, of Kearsarge Tavern, who had agreed to 
take them in "for the magnificent sum of $3.50 per 
week with the choice of the best rooms in the 
house," it being then the middle of August and there 
being not a guest in town. "You won't like me," 
said Mr. Thompson, as reported by Champney. 
"I'm a kind of crooked fellow, and you won't like 
me, but you can come and try it." They did like it, 
being made to feel at home and being supplied with 

196 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

a generous table of good old-fashioned cooking, and 
the landlord they liked also as they got acquainted 
with him, ever ready as he was to enter into any 
project for exploring the country and hunting out 
new beauties. Delighted with the surrounding 
scenery, they lingered in North Conway two months. 
Late in the season they painted Mount Washington, 
white with snow, from Sunset Hill. After his return 
to New York, Kensett made a large painting of this 
view, "The White Mountains and Valley of the 
Saco, from Sunset Hill, North Conway," which be- 
came very widely known, especially through an en- 
graving made of it by James Smillie. 

About the middle of October, Champney and the 
others left North Conway, making a trip on foot 
through the Crawford Notch and on to Franconia, 
sketching as they went and being heartily wel- 
comed and urged to come again another year by the 
landlords of the two or three then deserted Moun- 
tain houses. 

Champney returned the next summer with a re- 
inforcement of two Boston artists, Alfred Ordway 
and B. G. Stone, and found a New York contin- 
gent, headed by Casilear, already established at the 
Kearsarge House. The other New Yorkers were 
David Johnson,^ John Williamson, ^ and a nephew of 
A. B. Durand, and they "made a jolly crowd," says 
Champney. 

Again, in 1852, Champney returned to North 

^ Johnson painted a picture of "Echo Lake" (1867), and exhibited 
at the Centennial a view of the "Old Man of the Mountain." 

2 One of the most notable pictures of Williamson, who was of 
Scottish birth, is "The Summit of Chocorua by Twilight." 

197 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Conway, this time bringing with him Hamilton 
Wilde. Other artists had preceded them thither, and 
the little coterie nearly filled the dining-table in 
Thompson's old house. Every year brought fresh 
visitors to the hamlet, as news of its attractions 
spread, until in 1853 and 1854 the meadows were 
dotted with great numbers of white umbrellas. 
Samuel Colman,^ a pupil of Durand, R. W. Hub- 
bard,2 Sandford R. Gifford,^ and A. D. Shattuck,^ of 
New York, settled themselves at an old farmhouse 
situated near the Moat Mountain House and later 
remodeled and occupied by Mr. George Wolcott. 

After his wedding tour in 1853, Champney 
brought his bride to the Kearsarge House. Wilde, 
W. A. Gay,^ and other artists were there, and the 
little hostelry was crowded and more popular than 
ever. In the autumn of that year Champney bought 
Lewis Eastman's old-fashioned house in the lower 
part of the valley, and in the summer of 1854 the 
artist was domiciled in it, verandas and dormer win- 
dows being added and new rooms being finished the 
next year. The carpenter-shop on the place was 
transformed into a spacious studio with a top light. 

' Colman's " Conway Valley " was bought by a citizen of Brooklyn. 
2 Hubbard was a pupil of Professor Morse and of Daniel Hunting- 
ton. He painted "High Peak — North Conway," in 1871. 

* " His painting of Echo Lake is a very successful attempt to 
combine cloud, water, forest, and mountain scenery in a harmonious 
whole." S. G. W. Benjamin in Our American Artists, series i. 1879. 

* Shattuck, a native of New Hampshire and a brother-in-law of 
Colman, painted an "Autumnal View of the Androscoggin, with the 
White Mountains in the Distance," and a view of Mount Chocorua. 

* Gay, a pupil of Robert W. Weir and of Tryon, painted various 
pictures having to do with this region, including a "Mount Wash- 
ington" in the Boston Athenaeum. 

198 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

This building, which was to be so long occupied by 
its owner for artistic uses, was formally dedicated to 
such purposes in 1855 by a reunion of Champney's 
friends and a speech by Deacon Greeley, of Boston. 
Kensett,^ who was Champney's most intimate friend, 
visited him just as the studio was completed, and 
painted, Champney thinks, the first pictures made 
there. 

J. W. Casilear ^ has been already mentioned as 
an associate of Champney and Kensett at North 
Conway in the early days. Together these friends 
explored and sketched along Artists' Brook, whose 
laughing, bubbling waters, picturesque nooks, and 
transparent pools make it one of North Conway's 

1 John Frederick Kensett was born in 1818 at Cheshire, Connecti- 
cut, and died in 1872. He was one of the shining Hghts of the so- 
called "Hudson River School" and painted many White Mountain 
pictures, among them "Mount Washington, from North Conway" 
(1850); "Sketch of Mount Washington " (1851), now in the Cor- 
coran Gallery of Art, Washington; "Franconia Mountains" (1853); 
"White Mountain Scenery" (1859), now in the New York Public 
Library; "Glimpse of the White Mountains" (1867); and "New 
Hampshire Scenery," an elaborate view of the White Mountains, 
which belongs to the Century Club, New York. Champney writes of 
him: "Kensett was more to me than any other [of his school], for I 
had known him so intimately, and had struggled with him through 
want and difficulties abroad. . . . His brilliant studies brought back 
from the Catskills and White Mountains were marvels of clever 
handling and color. No one seemed able to give the sparkle of sun- 
light through the depths of the forest, touching on mossy rocks and 
shaggy tree-trunks, so well as he. ... I know that to-day his pictures 
are considered old-fashioned, that they are wanting in solidity and 
broad massing of forms, but that does not take away from them the 
lovely feeling of color and crispy touch they possess." 

2 His "Scene in New Hampshire" was painted in 1877. Champney 
thus characterizes his work: "His pictures are more delicate and re- 
fined than either Cole's or Durand's, but not so vigorous. . . . There 
is a poetic pastoral charm in all his work, pleasing to the eye, and 
possessing beautiful qualities." He also painted Chocorua. 

199 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

chief charms. The most noted of American land- 
scapists, George Inness, was also for a time a fre- 
quenter of North Conway, using as a studio "the 
ugly little building," once the academy, which was 
situated near the Kearsarge House and which was 
torn down in 1887. Inness also sketched in the West 
Ossipee region, having been, as has been noted, a 
guest at one of the predecessors of Whittier's favor- 
ite haunt, the Bearcamp River House. 

Thomas Hill, famous as a painter of the Sierras 
and the Yosemite, during his second residence in 
New England, in the last of the sixties, was one of 
the artist-colony at North Conway and painted at 
this period the thrilling picture ^ called "White 
Mountain Notch — Morning after the Willey Slide," 
an engraving of which forms the frontispiece of 
Thompson's revised edition of " Willey's Incidents." 

An artist connected in a melancholy way with 
North Conway is James A. Suydam, who died there 
September 15, 1865. In company with Sandford R. 
Gifford he was about to make a sketching tour of 
the White Hills, whence they were to go to Lake 
George. Suydam, not feeling very well, decided to 

* Benjamin thus describes it: "Mr. Hill has laid the scene of this 
large and powerful painting there [in the Notch at the Willey House 
location]. The top of the mountain is enveloped in a dense canopy of 
dun, lowering clouds, and a shadow like the threat of doom broods 
over the fated valley. It is long years since I saw that painting, 
but the impression it left upon me I am sure could only have been 
made by a work of real power, inspired by genuine imagination." Of 
his facility, Champney thus writes: " In one afternoon of three hours 
in the White Mountain forests, I have seen him produce a study, 
12 X 20 in size, full of details and brilliant light. There is his greatest 
strength, and his White Mountain wood studies have not been 
excelled." 

200 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

rest at North Conway while his companion went into 
the Mountains to study. Gifford rejoined his friend 
in time to be with him in his last hours. In Suydam's 
death "American art met," says Daniel Huntington, 
"with more than a common loss." His only White 
Mountain picture, "Conway Meadows," was pur- 
chased by a citizen of Washington. 

Mention of Huntington reminds one that this 
eminent portrait painter also painted Mountain 
landscapes. His " Chocorua Peak, New Hampshire," 
dating from i860, was purchased in 1861 by Mrs. 
R. L. Stuart, of New York, and now hangs in the 
Stuart Room of the New York Public Library. 

The late Homer Martin also visited and painted 
in the Mountains in his early days. His "Madison 
and Adams from Randolph Hill," depicting "two 
snow-capped mountains rising into a cold cloudy 
sky," was apparently produced in 1862. It was 
given in 1891 to the Metropolitan Museum of 
Art. 

Mr. Champney, who passed so many summers 
with keen delight in North Conway, and who has 
described its beauties so enthusiastically, says that 
at one time the village and the neighborhood of 
Artists' Brook were almost as famous as Barbizon 
and Fontainebleau after Millet, Rousseau, and 
Diaz had set the fashion. Artists of repute from all 
sections of the country came, but, he remarks, 
"Fashions change, and fads and whims come along 
to turn the current to the seashore, where the great- 
est simplicity of form prevails." His own studio was 
the resort of many from this country and even from 

201 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

foreign lands. Many of his Mountain canvases are 
owned in and around Boston. 

Albert Bierstadt, of Rocky Mountain fame, was a 
visitor here both in his earHer and his later years.^ 
His "On the Saco, New Hampshire," was painted 
in 1886. S. L. Gerry was another frequenter of the 
region. His best-known Mountain picture is his 
"The Old Man of the Mountain." 

Jackson, as has been said, was early discovered by 
artists as a center of rare landscape beauties. Board- 
man, Geary, Clark, Hoit, and Brackett are named 
as the pioneers there, the first of whom came, as has 
been previously noted, as early as 1847. Chester 
Harding, the portrait painter, to whom we owe the 
likeness of Abel Crawford, was also a visitor there. 
G. S. Merrill long occupied as a studio a deserted 
Free- Will Baptist church at the angle formed by the 
junction of the Dundee Road with the Black Moun- 
tain Road. In more recent times artists in great 
numbers have summered in Jackson. One who 
helped to a great degree to make known the beauties 
and wonders of the White Hills, the late Frank H. 
Shapleigh, of Boston, may be mentioned. For 
fifteen years, beginning in 1877, he had a studio at 
the Crawford House. Later, he built the quaint and 
otherwise attractive cottage, "Maple Knoll," be- 
hind the Jackson Falls House. Among his pictures 
are views of "The Northern Peaks" and "Mount 
Washington." 

1 In 1869, according to Benjamin Osgood, the guide, Bierstadt was 
a guest at the Glen House, and it was he who found Landlord 
Thompson's body. 

202 



THE POETS AND PAINTERS 

Campton and West Campton have attracted 
many artists. Among those who frequented this 
district in the early days are included Durand, Gay, 
Gerry, T. Addison Richards, Griggs, Pone, and 
Williams. 

Church's Falls, on Sabba-Day Brook in Albany, 
perpetuate the association of F. E. Church, who 
painted them, with the Mountain region. The 
Scottish-American artist William Hart was another 
who has depicted Chocorua, while H. B. Brown, of 
Portland, noted especially for his spirited reproduc- 
tions of coast scenery, painted a striking view of the 
Crawford Notch, looking up, which is familiar from 
its reproduction in photogravure. 

Another artist who deserves a mention in this 
fragmentary chronicle of White Mountain art is 
Godfrey N. Frankenstein, who was of German birth 
and who died in Springfield, Ohio, in 1873. He 
painted many sketches of the scenery of this region, 
two of which, "Mount Washington, over Tucker- 
man's Ravine" and "The Notch of the White 
Mountains from Mount Crawford," are litho- 
graphed in Oakes's "White Mountain Scenery." In 
his honor his friend. Dr. Bemis, gave his name to 
the imposing cliff just above Bemis Station on the 
Maine Central Railroad. 



IX 

THE LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS OF THE 
MOUNTAINS 

Accounts have been given in preceding chapters 
of the visits to the Mountains of some of the eminent 
scientific men of the early days and mention has been 
made of the results of their explorations. During 
later years, this region, so accessible to the earlier 
settled part of the country and possessing so many 
features of interest from the standpoint of science, 
has, naturally, been the theater for field work of a 
host of scientists and naturalists. Space can be taken 
to record the names and explorations of only the 
more noted of such observers and to summarize the 
activities and results of some of the more system- 
atic examinations of the natural phenomena of the 
region. 

A scientific event of the first years of the fifth 
decade of the nineteenth century, which concerned 
the Mountains to a considerable extent, was the 
first geological survey of New Hampshire. An in- 
ventory of the natural resources of the State, an 
account of which sort was what passed at that period 
for a geological survey, had been recommended for 
New Hampshire by several governors, but without 
success until Governor John Page in 1839 advocated 
such an undertaking and the legislature of that year 
passed an act providing for it. 

204 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

Acting under the authorization of the legislature, 
Governor Page appointed, as State Geologist to con- 
duct the work, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, 
a chemist and mineralogist of repute, who became 
world-famous later in connection with the discovery 
of anaesthesia. 

An annual appropriation of two thousand dollars 
for three years was authorized in the act for carrying 
out its provisions ; but, the laboratory work proving 
more difficult and extensive than was anticipated, 
additional appropriations were necessary from time 
to time, bringing the total cost of the Survey up to 
nine thousand dollars, exclusive of the expense of 
publishing the reports. 

Dr. Jackson, although he had already conducted 
similar surveys of Nova Scotia and Rhode Island, 
was one of the most primitive of State surveyors in 
his methods. Trained abroad under Elie de Beau- 
mont, he had adopted that scientist's erroneous 
theories of mountain-building, which rendered his 
geological work on the Mountain region largely 
futile. Moreover, when we learn that Dr. Jackson 
devoted but very little of his own time to the field 
work and that it was carried on for the most part by 
untrained and unpaid assistants, we are not sur- 
prised to find that the Survey accomplished so little 
of real scientific value. 

The summers of three years, beginning with 1840, 
were occupied In collecting minerals and soils, which 
were analyzed In Dr. Jackson's laboratory In Bos- 
ton during the winters following. Much of this field 
work was done in the White Mountains. 

205 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

This Survey, however, possesses for us another 
than its scientific interest, and that hes in the per- 
sonnel of the assistants. In the summer of the first 
year, M. B. WiUiams and Josiah Dwight Whitney, 
later the famous geologist and head of the Califor- 
nia State Survey, were employed in the field work, 
which closed for that year with a tour in August to 
the White Mountains. 

Williams was again in the field the following 
summer. Whitney, who found the work most con- 
genial, and who, then undecided as to his future 
career, was counseled by his chief to adopt the 
latter's profession, gained in the winter of 1840-41 
his first professional success, an appointment to the 
Survey as a paid assistant. His duties were to assist 
Dr. Jackson in the latter's laboratory in Boston in 
the analyses of the minerals collected the preceding 
summer. This work lasted only through the winter, 
and in the spring the future geologist ended his con- 
nection with the Survey. In the published report of 
the State Geologist, portions of which were Whit- 
ney's and Williams's own composition, they state 
that they two were the first of mankind to reach the 
top of Mount Washington on horseback.^ The report 
also contains seven full-paged lithographed plates of 
New Hampshire scenery from drawings by Whitney,^ 
a number of which were of White Mountain views. 

1 As Abel Crawford is affirmed by his son, Ethan, to be "the first 
man that ever rode a horse on the top of Mount Washington," he 
was evidently the guide on this occasion. Dr. Jackson was also of the 
party. 

- I am indebted for information as to Whitney's connection with 
the Survey to Edwin Tenney Brewster's Life and Letters of Josiah 
Dwight Whitney (1909). 

206 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

In 1841, Edward Everett Hale was, at the instance 
of his friend, William F. Channing, who had become 
an assistant on the Survey, appointed a junior 
member of it, and the two were in the field that 
summer, as was Channing also the following year. 
In September, Hale and Channing made a trip up 
the South Branch of Israel's River, in search of large 
sheets of mica alleged to have been found there. 
They continued up over one or more of the Northern 
Peaks and Washington and returned the next day 
to the old Fabyan tavern. Dr. Hale thus recalls his 
first ascent of Mount Washington, in "Tarry at 
Home Travels": "The first time I stood at the Tip- 
Top House ^ was at ten o'clock at night in the first 
week of September, 1841, with a crowbar in my hand 
as I pressed upon the door. It was after a tramp 
which had lasted seventeen hours and had taken us 
over Jefferson and through one or two thunder- 
storms." 

The advance in geological and mineralogical 
knowledge after the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury and the improvement in field and laboratory 
methods in these sciences having rendered the results 
of the earlier geological survey largely obsolete, the 
State authorities in the sixties determined upon 
undertaking a more thoroughgoing investigation of 
the physical conditions and resources of the State. 
They were further urged to this action by a number 
of considerations which arose from the character of 
the early Survey. The first inventory of the natural 
resources of New Hampshire, made under the direc- 

^ See pp. 329, 230. 
207 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

tion of Dr. Charles T. Jackson, was conducted, as 
has been intimated, in a very primitive manner, and 
the barometrical and other observations were incom- 
plete. More attention was paid to minerals and 
their localities and to soils as affecting agriculture 
than to structural geology, and so the reports deal 
largely with mineralogical, metallurgical, and eco- 
nomic descriptions and statements. Moreover, the 
State authorities did not think it important to color 
the geological map attached to the final report, 
which last fact makes it hard to understand many 
things that otherwise might have been evident. 

From the reports and map, therefore, it is difficult 
to deduce any very satisfactory notions of geological 
structure. Again, Dr. Jackson, as has been said, held 
erroneous theories as to mountain-formation, which 
invalidated his conclusions as to the geological 
structure of the State. Furthermore, the illustrative 
collection of rocks and minerals deposited by Dr. 
Jackson at Concord had been destroyed by fire. 

A new survey was, on all these accounts, a pressing 
need. Accordingly, at the June session of the legis- 
lature of New Hampshire in 1868, a bill was passed 
to provide for the geological and mineralogical sur- 
vey of the State, which bill received the approval of 
Governor Harriman on July 3. 

The appointment as State Geologist of C. H. 
Hitchcock, son and pupil of the eminent Professor 
and President Edward Hitchcock,^ of Amherst Col- 

^ In 1841, President Hitchcock ascended Mount Washington from 
the old Notch House, and wrote about the rocks in a paper upon 
glacio-aqueous action in North America. 

208 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

lege, and himself professor of geology at Dartmouth 
College, was a natural and fitting one. Professor 
Hitchcock's character, equipment, and experience — 
he had been Assistant State Geologist of Vermont 
and State Geologist of Maine — insured an accurate, 
comprehensive, and otherwise adequate prosecution 
of the work. 

While it is not the province of this narrative to 
give a history of the Survey, still so much of its 
activity related to and centered about the White 
Mountains that a summary of the explorations in 
that region must necessarily embody an outline 
of a large part of the entire field work. 

The day, September 9, 1868, after he received 
notice of his appointment. Professor Hitchcock, 
although the season was almost too late to com- 
mence work, started for Lisbon to begin the exami- 
nation of the Ammonoosuc gold field. There was 
time, naturally, for little more than a reconnais- 
sance of that district for the purpose of laying out 
future work. 

J. H. Huntington, of Hanover, and George L. 
Vose, of Paris, Maine, having been appointed as- 
sistant geologists, the former was made principal 
assistant, while to Mr. Vose was assigned the White 
Mountain region as his special subject or definite 
area to investigate. He was expected to pay espe- 
cial attention to the topography, and, in addition 
to the delineation of the geological structure, to 
furnish the most accurate map of the region ever 
drawn. 

Field work for 1869 was begun in May on the 
209 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Ammonoosuc gold field, which received more at- 
tention than any other portion of the territory and 
concerning which a comprehensive report, with a 
colored geological map of the most interesting part 
of the area, was printed in pamphlet form. This 
map, with its accompanying descriptions, is of his- 
torical importance as containing the germ of the 
geologists' notions and opinions as to the structure 
of all New England. 

Mr. Vose spent a few weeks of this year among 
the White Mountains, taking a large number of 
observations for the purpose of fixing the exact 
position of many of the high peaks and also mak- 
ing observations upon the geology of the region. 
By this means the latitude and longitude of Passa- 
conaway, the northern Kearsarge, Whiteface, and 
Chocorua were ascertained. From Kearsarge and 
Chocorua, he drew accurate sketches of all the 
mountains as seen along the New Hampshire hori- 
zon, using a six-inch theodolite for the purpose. 
In August he resigned his position on the Survey. 

During the winter of 1869-70, as narrated in full 
in another place, Mr. Huntington carried out, with 
Mr. A. F. Clough, the winter occupation of Moosi- 
lauke. In May, 1870, Mr. Huntington made a trip 
on foot to determine the relative altitude of the 
passes along the principal White Mountain Range 
between the Crawford House and Waterville, an 
expedition which was attended with considerable 
labor owing to the fact that much snow was still 
remaining. 

By this time in the progress of the Survey, the 
210 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

geologists had begun to understand the structure of 
the White Mountains, "which knowledge proved 
to be the key to that of the rest of the State." This 
field of research having been left vacant by the 
resignation aforesaid, the State Geologist himself 
assumed the duty of exploring the territory. 

The area for investigation for 1870 included es- 
pecially the region, about thirty miles long and 
twelve or fifteen wide, bounded by Israel's, Moose, 
Peabody, Ellis, and Saco Rivers. The laboriousness 
of the work of exploration is plainly indicated when 
it is stated that the area was nearly an unbroken 
forest, traversed only by bridle paths and roads 
used for the ascent of Mount Washington in summer. 
The plan of campaign pursued was to visit system- 
atically with the hammer and barometer every one 
of the numerous peaks and valleys which make up 
this tract. So numerous were the localities requir- 
ing visitation that six members of the class of 1871 
of Dartmouth College were invited to assist. J. H. 
Huntington, Dr. Nathan Barrows, and E. Hitch- 
cock, Jr., also furnished aid in this work. The Sur- 
vey party lived among the mountains, in extempore 
camps, until the explorations and observations had 
been made. Animated by the desire to discover the 
real geological structure of the region, the members 
of the party did not rest until all the nearly inacces- 
sible peaks and ravines had been explored. Often the 
exertion necessary to procure a single specimen was 
greater than that required to pass over Mount Wash- 
ington on foot by the paths, involving, as it did, 
traveling through primeval forest, full of under" 

211 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

brush, fallen trees, and other obstacles. Many of 
the results of the exploring work were thus, Pro- 
fessor Hitchcock remarks, ''acquired only through 
infinite toil." 

The first result of this laborious and painstaking 
survey of the Mountain region was the construc- 
tion by the State Geologist of a physical model ^ of 
the area. This is about five feet in length, and is 
on the scale of one hundred and forty rods to the 
inch horizontally, and of one thousand feet to three 
fourths of an inch vertically. 

The White Mountain explorations of 1871 ^ in- 
cluded a thorough examination of the area lying 
between the Saco and Pemigewasset Rivers and 
north of Sandwich. This work, which continued 
uninterruptedly for a month beginning just after 
the middle of June, was carried on with the assist- 
ance of eleven members of the graduating class of 
Dartmouth College, who proffered their services 
and who labored cheerfully and effectively, all 
contributing something of value. Two of them dis- 
covered a new lake (Haystack Lake) on the north- 
west side of Mount Garfield (then called "The Hay- 
stack") ; two others found a still larger one upon the 

^ After this had been exhibited in public, it was learned that a 
plaster model of the White Mountains had been fashioned several 
years before by Rev. Dr. Thomas Hill, formerly president of Har- 
vard College. Dr. Hill's model was upon a much smaller scale, about 
eighteen inches square, and it showed all the ridges and valleys from 
Gorham to Conway and Littleton. It was built upon the basis of 
Bond's map of 1853, and showed great familiarity with the structure 
of the Mountains. 

2 In the winter of 1870-71 occurred the first winter occupation 
of Mount Washington, by Huntington and others, as related else- 
where. 

212 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

east side of Mount Kinsman; others measured the 
length of the Profile and explored the Devil's Den 
on Mount Willard. Soon after the disbanding of 
the first party, a new one was formed, some of the 
members of which remained two months longer ex- 
ploring the country as far south as Sandwich. 

A still larger party than the first of the preceding 
year was organized for work in 1872. It included 
thirteen members of the class of 1872 of Dartmouth 
College, and two members of the class of 1873. One 
section of it was engaged in making a plane-table 
survey of the southwest portion of the Mountain 
area, for the purpose of perfecting the map. The 
remainder of the party examined, under the guid- 
ance of Mr. Huntington, the rocks along the Saco 
Valley and in Albany, being occupied in this work 
for a period of three weeks. 

Although the exploration had been essentially 
completed in 1872, Messrs. Hitchcock and Hunt- 
ington visited a few points about the Mountains 
in 1873 and later years for the sake of completing 
their knowledge of them. In 1875, Professor Hitch- 
cock made a special reexamination of the Saco Val- 
ley, and in July of that year he made observations 
in the Crawford Notch along the line of the new rail- 
road, Professor J. D. Dana examining with him the 
rocks in the neighborhood of the second cut from the 
Crawford House. In the course of this field work two 
flumes, Hitchcock and Butterwort, were discovered 
on Mount Willard by Professor Hitchcock. 

Such are in outline the main features of the work 
of this Survey so far as it concerned the White 

213 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Mountains. The results of this great State enter- 
prise are embodied in the three monumental volumes 
on the geology of New Hampshire,^ published by 
the State of New Hampshire (1874-78), the first two 
of which contain a vast amount of information con- 
cerning the scientific aspects of the White Moun- 
tains, with many illustrations, maps, and diagrams 
relating to them. 

It remains, before I am done with this topic of 
the scientific exploration of the Mountains, to set 
down briefly the facts and circumstances relating 
to the activities of one or two other investigators 
in this field than those whose work under State aus- 
pices has just been described. ^ 

1 Volume I contains: "History of Explorations among the White 
Mountains," by Warren Upham; "The Distribution of Insects in 
New Hampshire," by William F. Flint; and "Scenery of Coos 
County," by J. H. Huntington. The geology of the White Mountain 
district is given in volume ii (1877). Volume iii contains little about 
the Mountains. The maps include a large contour map issued in 
sections and a colored geological map in sections. 

2 Among early geological explorers of this region who published 
articles embodying the results of their observations are Oliver P. 
Hubbard, M.D., Henry D. and William B. Rogers, and Professor J. 
P. Lesley. Dr. Hubbard studied the geology and mineralogy of the 
Mountains and published an outline of the results of his investiga- 
tions in the American Journal of Science and Arts for April, 1838. In 
the same journal for March, 1850, he printed the results of his study 
of the condition of trap dikes as evidence of erosion. The Rogerses 
explored the Notch in July, 1845, and published a joint article on the 
geological age of the White Mountains in the American Journal of 
Science and Arts for May, 1846. Professor Lesley visited the region 
in 1849 and subsequent years, and in 1857 made a section along the 
Grand Trunk Railway. In the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences of Philadelphia for i860, he stated briefly the results of some 
observations made in the White Mountains during that summer. 
Among those who have dealt with the glacial phenomena are, besides 
Agassiz, Professors C. H. Hitchcock, Alpheus S. Packard, and 
Warren Upham. 

214 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

The beloved teacher, Louis Agassiz, made a jour- 
ney here the first summer (1847) after his arrival in 
America. At that time he "noticed unmistakable 
evidences of the former existence of local glaciers," 
which, he says, "were the more clear and impres- 
sive to me because I was then fresh from my inves- 
tigation of the glaciers in Switzerland." Beyond the 
mere statement, in a letter to Elie de Beaumont, of 
the fact of his having seen some very distinct mo- 
raines in some valleys of the White Mountains, he 
at that time made no report upon the glacial phe- 
nomena of the region, publishing nothing in the 
way of a detailed account of the observations, be- 
cause he did not then have time to study the diffi- 
cult problem closely enough. Opportunity to revisit 
the region for a more careful examination did not 
present itself until twenty-three years later. As a 
result of a prolonged stay among the Hills in the 
summer of 1870, however, he was able to trace the 
contact of the more limited phenomena of the local 
glaciers, which succeeded the all-embracing winter 
of the Glacial period, with the more widespread and 
general features of the drift. In a paper, published 
in the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Meeting of 
the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, held in that year, were set forth the gen- 
eral facts then ascertained, which were all that the 
space admitted. He described especially the fine 
moraines in Bethlehem and vicinity, which particu- 
larly interested him, noting the various kinds, de- 
fining their locations, and indicating the course 
and extent of the glaciers which occupied the re- 

215 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

gion.^ Very fittingly, in honor of the great scientist, 
his name has been bestowed upon the prominent 
hill in that town, formerly known as "Peaked" or 
"Picket Hill," and now visited annually by so many 
persons for its magnificent panoramic view,^ He 
is commemorated also elsewhere in the Mountains, 
the striking rock formation on the Moosilauke Brook 
in Woodstock, where the water of the stream rolls 
through deep black basins hollowed out of the solid 
granite, having been named the "Agassiz Basins" 
shortly after his visit to the locality. 

Agassiz's personal friend and scientific associate 
of long standing, — they had been intimates from 
boyhood and colleagues in Switzerland, — Arnold 
Guyot, compelled to abandon his work in Europe 
because of the political disturbances of 1848, fol- 
lowed his friend to this country, which he was 
destined, like his friend also, to make his place of 
abode thereafter. Although Guyot finally settled at 
Princeton, while Agassiz was attached to Harvard, 
the two friends kept up their intercourse and shared 
all their scientific interests. 

The Princeton professor, who made geography his 
specialty, began as early as 1849 a series of investi- 
gations of the physical structure of the Appalachian 
Mountain system and of measurements of its alti- 
tudes from New Hampshire to Georgia. In that 

^ What one mountain jehu remarked of Agassiz and his assistants, 
after witnessing the apparently strange antics of the scientific observ- 
ers, has happily been preserved. "They said they was ' naturals,' and 
I should think they was!" 

^ A noble tribute to the great man is the poem of Charlotte Fiske 
Bates (Madame Roget), entitled "Mount Agassiz." It is printed 
in Musgrove's The White Hills in Poetry. 

216 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

year he made the first of a series of four summer 
excursions devoted to the barometric exploration of 
the White Mountains, and he continued his work 
until he had spent five years over New Hampshire, 
the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the Adiron- 
dacks and other elevated regions in the State of 
New York. Among his companions, who constantly 
made corresponding observations to his, were Mr. 
Ernest Sandoz, who was with him in nearly all his 
excursions, Mr. £mile Grand Pierre, who accom- 
panied him during three summers, and Alexander 
Agassiz, Edward Rutledge, and Herbert Torrey, 
then young men, who gave him active assistance 
in the White Mountains. 

In 1 85 1, Professor Guyot measured Mount Wash- 
ington by barometric observations, and obtained the 
height of 6291 feet, ^ only two feet under the now 
accepted altitude, ascertained by Captain T. J. 
Cram by spirit leveling in 1853. He continued his 
explorations in the White Hills from time to time. 
In 1857, he made ascents of Mounts Washington, 
Willard, and Carrigain.^ The association of his name 
with the region has been made perpetual by the 
conferring of it upon one of the peaks of the Twin 
Mountain Range. 

Notable scientific work has been done in the 
Mountains in the domain of entomology by Samuel 

1 In his memoir "On the Appalachian Mountain System," pub- 
lished in the American Journal of Science and Arts for March, 1861, 
he changed his figures to 6288. 

* The itinerary of his expedition of this year, with letters written 
while en route, is given by S. Hastings Grant, one of his companions, 
in Appalachia for June, 1907. 

217 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

H. Scudder, a pupil of Agassiz and the first of the 
vice-presidents of the Appalachian Mountain Club 
and the first editor of Appalachia; by Mrs. Annie 
Trumbull Slosson, noted also as a story-writer; and 
by J. H. Emerton, the authority on spiders. 

The explorations of the earlier botanists in these 
happy hunting-grounds of the plant-lover have been 
narrated. Additional information as to the scientific 
aspects of the plants of the Mountains and as to the 
plants of different localities has been furnished by 
a number of later investigators. The volumes of 
Appalachia contain many valuable articles and notes 
on botanical matters, as well as on other scientific 
phenomena of the region, by members of the Appa- 
lachian Mountain Club who are scientists by pro- 
fession or who find their recreation in the making 
of observations or explorations as amateurs. The 
literary naturalists, Bradford Torrey, Frank Bolles, 
and Winthrop Packard, whose main interest is 
ornithological, have also written about the flowers 
and their haunts found in wandering afoot among 
the Hills. The writers just mentioned have des- 
canted pleasingly, even if sometimes too exclusively 
for the general reader, upon the birds which make 
their spring and summer sojourn here. 

The story of an exploring feat, of the nature of a 
satisfaction of curiosity rather than of scientific in- 
quiry, may well find space here. This is the descent 
to the Devil's Den, a dark-mouthed cave high up on 
the sheer cliffs of the south side of Mount Willard, 
where it is plainly seen from the Notch. This peril- 
ous undertaking was twice accomplished during the 

218 



LATER SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATIONS 

last century by daring explorers. There is a tradi- 
tion that Abel Crawford visited it many years ago 
and found the bottom bestrewn with bones and 
other ghastly remains. Be that as it may, curiosity 
was early aroused as to what this lofty hollow, in- 
accessible by any way affording foothold, might con- 
tain. According to Spaulding, the credit of first 
visiting the place belongs to F. Leavitt, Esq., who, 
by means of a rope let down from the overhanging 
rock, succeeded in reaching the level of the cavern. 
Finding, it is said, a collection of skulls and bones 
of animals scattered about the entrance, the explorer 
lost all desire to enter the dismal den, and, after 
dangling but a short while at this perilous height, 
gave the signal to be drawn up. "As the old Evil 
One has such daily business with mortal affairs," 
remarks Mr. Spaulding, with quiet humor, "rather 
than believe that to be his abode, it appears more 
just to conclude that alone there the mountain eagle 
finds a solitary home." 

In 1870, as has been mentioned, the cavern was 
explored by members of the Geological Survey party, 
let down, by means of one hundred and twenty-five 
feet of rope from the summit of the mountain. 
"Our explorers," says Professor Hitchcock, ". . . 
discovered nothing mysterious about this locality, 
but would not advise visitors to explore it again 
without better facilities for going and coming than 
they enjoyed." 



X 

THE COMING OF THE RAILROADS — THEIR LATER 
EXTENSIONS 

As a glance at the map of the White Mountain 
region will suggest, there is in this country probably 
no other summer-resort area, and certainly no other 
mountain district of anything like its extent, that 
is to-day provided with such an abundance of rail- 
road facilities, rendering it at once easy of access 
and convenient for local travel. Indeed, this is so 
much the case that it may be affirmed that, like 
some other parts of New England, it is possibly 
oversupplied with such means of transportation. In 
these automobile days the railroad has ceased to 
play so great a part as it once did as a carrier of 
people to and through the Mountains, but in former 
days it was an essential and very great element in 
the growth, and, indeed, in the very existence, of the 
region as a summer resort. 

As a necessary preliminary, therefore, to an ac- 
count of that development, as well as for its own in- 
trinsic interest, a brief outline of the chief steps by 
which the railroads approached the Mountains from 
different points and of the building of the local ex- 
tensions would seem to be pertinent at this point. 

The first railroad to reach the region was the At- 
lantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, which was pro- 
jected to run from Portland, Maine, to Island Pond, 

220 



THE RAILROADS 

Vermont, and which was chartered successively in 
1845, 1847, and 1848, by the three States it was to 
cross. Construction was begun July 4, 1846, and 
was completed as far as Gorham, New Hampshire, 
early in 1852. The entire line from Portland to the 
western terminus in Vermont was opened in Janu- 
ary of the following year. At the latter place this 
railroad was to connect with the St. Lawrence and 
Atlantic Railroad, a line from Montreal to that point 
in Vermont, the two roads, with the interchanged 
names, thereby forming a continuous route between 
the two cities. The Canadian line was completed 
and opened for business in July, 1853. On the even- 
ing of the 1 8th of that month, the first train from 
Montreal arrived in Portland, where it was received 
with the ringing of bells, a salute of thirty-one guns, 
and various other formal and informal manifesta- 
tions of joy at the consummation of this great work. 
About this time the amalgamation of a number of 
Canadian lines into one Grand Trunk Railway was 
effected, and to this system the Atlantic and St. 
Lawrence Railroad was leased for 999 years on 
August 8, 1853. 

The route of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Rail- 
road, which is now known only by the general name 
of the Grand Trunk, and which is the one that has 
present interest for us, is, when approaching the 
Mountains, up the beautiful valley of the Andros- 
coggin River, through Shelburne and Gorham. It 
thus passes to the north of the White Mountains, 
and so has been superseded for the most part, as a 
means of access to the region, by the railroads from 

221 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the south and another railroad from Portland reach- 
ing directly the resorts among the Mountains. At 
the time of the completion of this first railroad to 
Gorham, there were only five public houses from 
which the summit of Mount Washington could be 
reached in a day, which statement will give the 
reader, familiar with the accommodations of to-day, 
some notion of the development of the region since 
the coming of the railroads. 

The advance of the railroads from the south was 
a slow one, forty years elapsing from the time the 
early railroads out of Boston were opened before a 
traveler could reach the heart of the Mountains 
from that city entirely by rail. 

The Boston and Lowell Railroad was opened for 
travel June 26, 1835. Three days before this opening 
of the road to Lowell, the Nashua and Lowell Rail- 
road Company obtained a charter to build a road 
from the State line northwardly in the Merrimac 
Valley. The line was opened to Nashua, December 
23, 1838. The surveys for the next link, the Concord 
Railroad, were made by Loammi Baldwin, Jr., 
William Gibbs McNeill, and George Washington 
Whistler,^ the father of the artist, and the pioneer 
passenger train ran into Concord ^ Tuesday evening, 
September 6, 1842, a great gathering of rejoicing 

1 Major Whistler went to Russia in 1842 to superintend the con- 
struction of the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and died 
in that country seven years later. William Gibbs McNeill was his 
brother-in-law. 

2 A favorite route to New Hampshire from New York about 1850 
was by steamer to Norwich, Connecticut, and thence to Concord via 
the Norwich and Worcester Railroad, opened in 1840, the Nashua 
and Worcester Railroad, and the Concord Railroad. 

222 



THE RAILROADS 

people being on hand to welcome it. This was only 
twelve years after the first steam railway, the Liver- 
pool and Manchester, was built. 

North of Concord two lines were soon under con- 
struction, and in a little more than ten years Little- 
ton was reached. Here, however, the advance was 
halted for two decades.^ 

The Northern Railroad of New Hampshire started 
from Concord, proceeded up the Merrimac to Frank- 
lin, and then struck over to a point on the Connecti- 
cut River near the mouth of its tributary, the White 
River. It was opened to Lebanon in November, 1847, 
and to White River Junction in the town of Hart- 
ford, Vermont, in June, 1848. There it connected 
with the Vermont Central Railroad (later the Cen- 
tral Vermont) and with the Connecticut and Pas- 
sumpsic Rivers Railroad, lines then under construc- 
tion. With the latter, which was in operation to 
Wells River as early as 1849, it formed a route much 
used, though somewhat less direct, by travelers to 
the Mountains in the early days as an alternative 
to the one about to be mentioned. The Northern 
Railroad became a part of the Boston and Maine 
system in 1890. 

The Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad, 
the other line and the one which has more of interest 
for us as that which eventually became a link in the 
principal through route from Boston to the White 
Mountain region, was chartered on December 27, 

^ A correspondent, "Pennacook," of the New York Herald, writing 
from the Flume House, June 15, 1853, speaks of the approaching 
opening of the railroad to Littleton, and adds, "No railroad should 
ever be constructed farther into these mountains than Littleton." 

223 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

1844. It was to start from Concord or Bow, and 
was to extend to some point on the west bank of the 
Connecticut River opposite Haverhill or to Little- 
ton. Construction was immediately undertaken by 
the enterprising and courageous people who lived 
along its way, and on May 22, 1848, there was an 
opening of the road to Sanbornton (now Tilton). 
On this occasion the new engine, "Old Man of the 
Mountain," and cars painted sky-blue, were deemed 
peculiarly appropriate for a line whose future travel 
would largely consist of traffic to and from the White 
Mountains. Plymouth was reached in January, 
1850, and Wells River, May 10, 1853. Late the 
same year, in December, the White Mountains Rail- 
road was opened to Littleton. Twenty years later, 
this latter line became by purchase a part of the 
Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad. 

In 1856, when the Boston, Concord, and Mon- 
treal Railroad, which was peculiarly a New Hamp- 
shire enterprise, was on the verge of bankruptcy, 
John E. Lyon took charge of it. To his courage, 
initiative, and persistency were due the extensions 
built into the north country beyond Littleton 
between 1869 and 1878. 

This railroad-builder was, it may be mentioned 
in passing, concerned in many other enterprises con- 
nected with the development of the White Moun- 
tains as a resort. Besides being associated with Mr. 
Marsh in the Mount Washington Railway, he was 
instrumental in the rebuilding of the Pemigewasset 
House at Plymouth and in the building of the Fabyan 
House and of the Summit House on Mount Wash- 

224 



THE RAILROADS 

ington, and was one of the incorporators of the 
Moosilauke Mountain Road Company. 

The further extensions of the White Mountains 
Railroad referred to were to Lancaster, to which 
point the road was opened October 31, 1870; to 
Groveton, reached on the national hoHday two 
years later; and to Fabyan by way of Wing Road, 
to which terminus the road was opened July 4, 1874. 
Two years afterwards, the railroad was extended 
from Fabyan to the Base in time to be opened 
early in July, and thus the stage service over the 
turnpike from Fabyan to the Mount Washington 
Railway was superseded. The Profile House and 
Bethlehem were for some years longer accessible 
only by stage, but in 1879 a narrow-gauge road was 
opened to the former and in 188 1 to the latter. These 
branch lines, which are operated only in the sum- 
mer, remained narrow-gauge until 1897, when the 
change to standard -gauge was completed.^ 

What these extensions meant to the development 
of the region as a summer recreation ground and 
tourist center will be at once evident to any present- 
day frequenter of the White Mountains, when he 
recalls that for more than a score of years Littleton 
was the northern terminus of the White Mountains 
Railroad, and that Bethlehem, the Profile House and 
the Franconia Notch, the Crawford House and Notch, 
and other places were accessible only by long and 
tedious, and often otherwise unpleasant, stage rides. 

^ I am indebted to the Boston and Maine Railroad, and particu- 
larly to Mr. G. E. Cummings, superintendent of the White Mountains 
Division, for information as to the time of this change of gauge on the 
Profile and Franconia Notch Railroad. 

225 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

The openings of two more branch lines remain to 
be chronicled. North Woodstock, now become a con- 
siderable summer resort, was connected by rail with 
Plymouth in 1883. Ten years later, a road twenty 
miles long was opened to Berlin. This started at the 
old terminus on Jefferson Meadow of the Whitefield 
and Jefferson Railroad, opened in 1879, at a point 
near to which starts the spur, opened in 1892, to the 
Waumbek Hotel, and passed through Randolph 
and Gorham. 

All of these railroads in the Mountain region now 
form a part of the Boston and Maine Railroad sys- 
tem, which controls nearly all the railroads in the 
Granite State. 

The lines up the Connecticut River from Spring- 
field, Massachusetts, which city was connected by 
rail with Hartford, Connecticut, in 1844, were opened 
at various times. The principal links in the northern 
part of this the most direct route from New York 
City to the White Mountains were the Connecticut 
River Railroad, opened to South Vernon, January 
I, 1849; the Vermont Valley Railroad, Brattleboro 
to Bellows Falls, opened in 1851 ; the Sullivan County 
Railroad, Bellows Falls to Windsor, opened in Feb- 
ruary, 1849, and sold October i, 1880, to the Ver- 
mont Valley Railroad; and the Connecticut and 
Passumpsic Rivers Railroad, from White River 
Junction on. All these lines were eventually leased 
to the Boston and Maine. 

Another important means of rendering the Moun- 
tains accessible by rail was undertaken in the early 
seventies in the construction of the Portland and 

226 



THE RAILROADS 

Ogdensburg Railroad, so called, some one has face- 
tiously remarked, because it started from Portland 
and never reached Ogdensburg. To two brothers, cit- 
izens of the State of Maine, belongs the credit for the 
building of this railroad, which vies with the Mount 
Washington Railway as a conception and achieve- 
ment and in scenic interest. General Samuel J. An- 
derson, of Portland, was the foremost promoter of 
the road and its first president. "Being," says Mrs. 
Mason in her article on Conway, "a gifted and per- 
suasive speaker, it was easy for him to induce the 
town of Conway to raise five per cent of its valuation 
for the building of the road." John Farwell Anderson, 
of South Windham, Maine, was the engineer. Main- 
taining that the gorges of the Crawford Notch could 
be bridged, he accomplished the feat after it had 
been repeatedly declared impossible by other engi- 
neers. The company was chartered in February, 
1867, and in four and a half years the line reached 
North Conway. It was opened to Fabyan in 
August, 1875. Some idea of the difficulties and 
expense of construction and operation may be gained 
from the facts that of the total ascent of 1890 feet 
from Portland to Crawford's, 1369 feet are included 
in the thirty miles between North Conway and the 
latter place, and that between Bemis and Craw- 
ford's the rise is 116 feet to the mile for nine con- 
secutive miles. Such structures on the right of way 
as the Frankenstein Trestle ^ and the Willey Brook 
Bridge are striking evidences of the skill and genius 
of the engineer. 

1 The old trestle was replaced by a new steel one in 1895. 
227 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Less than a year after the Portland and Ogdens- 
burg was opened to North Conway, the Eastern 
Railroad, now a part of the Boston and Maine, 
reached Conway. To-day the rail connection be- 
tween the two, which form together another through 
route from Boston to the Mountains, is at Inter- 
vale. In 1888, the former road fell into the hands of 
the Maine Central and was renamed the Mountain 
Division of that railroad. The following year the 
line was extended from Fabyan to Scott's Mills 
via the Twin Mountain House and Whitefield, thus 
completing a route passing entirely through the 
heart of the Mountains. A later extension to the 
northward, from Quebec Junction to North Strat- 
ford, opened in 1891, made the Maine Central a 
means of access to the region from Canada. 



XI 

THE HOTELS ON MOUNT WASHINGTON — THE CAR- 
RIAGE ROAD, AND THE MOUNT WASHINGTON 
RAILWAY — HOTELS AND SHELTERS ON OTHER 
SUMMITS 

The steps in two connected enterprises — one the 
supplying of shelter for visitors to Mount Washing- 
ton and the other the providing of means of making 
the ascent for others than persons coming on foot or 
on horseback — form perhaps the most interesting 
series of events in White Mountain history. The 
joint story covers a long period of time and is a record 
worthy of the strong men who by their courage and 
energy have made New Hampshire famous. I have 
already told of the building of the earlier footpaths 
and the bridle path and of the first shelter erected 
on the Mountain. This latter, it will be recalled, 
consisted of Ethan Allen Crawford's three stone 
cabins, which, soon after their erection in 1823, were 
abandoned. Mr. Crawford followed these with a 
large tent, which he spread near a spring of water 
not far from the Summit and which was provided 
with a sheet-iron stove. Because, however, of the 
violent storms and wind, this new shelter could not 
be kept in place and soon wore out. 

Soon after the bridle path was opened, a rude 
wooden shelter of about a dozen feet square was built, 

229 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

but its existence was short, ^ and it is not known 
what became of it. This is the "Tip-Top House," 
that Dr. Edward Everett Hale tells of entering, in 
September, 1841. 

The first hotel on Mount Washington was built 
in 1852, and owed its construction to the enterprise 
of Nathan R. Perkins, of Jefferson, and Lucius M. 
Rosebrook and Joseph S. Hall, both citizens of Lan- 
caster. This difficult work was begun in May, and 
on July 28 the hotel, the "Summit House," was 
opened to the public. 

All the lumber for the sheathing and roof had to 
be carried upon horses from a sawmill near Jefferson 
Highlands. A chain was hung over the horse's back 
and one end of each board was run through a loop 
at the end of the chain, two boards being carried 
on each side of the horse. The drivers, D. S. Davis 
and A. Judson Bedell, walked behind carrying the 
farther end of the boards. Mr. Rosebrook, it is said, 
carried the front door up the Mountain on his back 
from the Glen House. Such were the obstacles that 
were overcome by these energetic men. 

This structure, which stood on the north side of 
the peak, was built largely of rough stones blasted 
from the Mountain and was firmly secured to its 
rocky foundation by cement and large iron bolts. 
Over the low, sloping gable roof passed four stout 
cables. It was enlarged the following year, when 
Mr. Perkins was in charge and a half-interest had 

1 Colonel Charles Parsons, of St. Louis, who visited Mount 
Washington in 1900 for the second time, remembered that this 
shelter was in existence in 1844, when he walked up the Mountain. 
(From his "Reminiscences" in Among the Clouds.) 

230 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

been sold to Nathaniel Noyes and an associate, and 
an upper story with a pitched roof was added. It 
withstood the storms of winter for more than thirty 
years, being used, after the building of the second 
Summit House, as a dormitory for its employees 
until 1884, when it was demolished. 

The success of this undertaking led to the erec- 
tion of a rival house, the famous Tip-Top House, 
which was opened in August, 1853. Samuel Fitch 
Spaulding, of Lancaster, was the builder, and his 
associates in the project and in the management of 
the hotel were his sons and a nephew, John Hub- 
bard Spaulding, the author of "Historical Relics of 
the White Mountains." It was built of rough stones, 
similarly to the Summit House, measured eighty- 
four by twenty-eight feet, and had originally a deck 
roof, upon which the visitor might stand and thus 
have an unobstructed view. A telescope was kept 
there in pleasant weather. Competition between the 
two hotels was keen the first common season, but in 
1854 Mr. Perkins disposed of his interest in the Sum- 
mit House to the Spauldings, who managed the two 
houses for nine seasons. Mary B. Spaulding (Mrs. 
Lucius Hartshorn), daughter of Samuel F. Spaulding, 
managed the Tip-Top House for three seasons. In 
a letter written a few years ago she gives a vivid 
description of the difficulty of managing a hotel on 
the Mountain at that day. Everything had to be 
brought on horses' backs from the Glen House, and 
fresh meat, potatoes, milk, and cream were absent 
from the menu. Among the supplies kept on hand 
were bacon, ham, tripe, tongue, eggs, and rice, and 

231 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

pancakes, johnnycake, fried cakes, and varieties of 
hot bread and biscuit were served. The number of 
guests for dinner was very uncertain and could be 
roughly estimated only from the number of visitors 
at the foot of the Mountain and from the weather 
conditions. Among her guests she names Jefferson 
Davis, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, and 
William H. Seward. 

C. H. V. Cavis, engineer for the carriage road, 
was for one year manager of the Tip-Top House. 
In his day, according to Mrs. Cavis, in order to 
estimate the number of guests for dinner, some one 
went to what is known as Point Lookoff , overlooking 
the Lakes of the Clouds, and counted the ponies 
in the cavalcade coming along the bridle path from 
Crawford's. Others came from the Glen and from 
Fabyan's. Landlord Cavis kept some cows on the 
plateau, since known as the "Cow Pasture," near 
the seven-mile post of the carriage road. 

The first woman to sleep in the house after its 
opening in August, 1853, was a Mrs. Duhring, of 
Philadelphia, who came up on horseback from the 
Crawford House and walked down. Twenty-four 
years later she revisited the Mountain. 

From 1862 to 1872, the lessee of the Tip-Top 
House and Summit House was Colonel John R. 
Hitchcock, who was also the proprietor of the Alpine 
House in Gorham. He paid a rent of two thousand 
dollars a year after the first year. Colonel Hitch- 
cock connected the two houses, and, after the com- 
pletion of the carriage road, an upper story con- 
taining seventeen little bedrooms was added to the 

232 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

Tip-Top House. Mrs. Atwood, the housekeeper of 
the Alpine House, had charge of the Summit hotels, 
visiting them twice a week in a specially constructed 
light two-horse carriage. During the Hitchcock 
regime, in which baked beans, brown bread, and 
other simple dishes were chief features of the bill- 
of-fare, the business, especially after the building 
of the railway, far outgrew the accommodations. 
After the building of the new Summit House, the Tip- 
Top House was used by hotel and railway employees 
for a few years. From 1877 to 1884, the printing 
office of Among the Clouds was in the old hotel, its 
front room being equipped for that purpose in the 
former year. After that use of it ceased, the build- 
ing, owing to dampness, fell somewhat into decay 
and came to be visited only as a curiosity. In 1898, 
an observatory was constructed at the western end 
to afford a good place from which to watch the 
sunsets. 

But this ancient landmark was not destined to 
remain a curiosity only. As the sole survivor of the 
fire which devastated the Summit just before the 
opening of the season of 1908, the venerable struc- 
ture had necessarily to be restored to its original 
purpose of a place of entertainment and shelter. 
As such it continued to be used until the opening 
of a new Summit House in 1915. 

The next structure to be built on the Summit 
after the erection of the Tip-Top House was an 
observatory. Built in 1854, by Timothy Estus,^ of 

* So Spaulding. Professor Hitchcock, in Mount Washington in 
Winter, gives the builder's name as Timothy Eaton. 

233 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Jefferson, it was a framework forty feet high sup- 
ported by iron braces at the corners. It was pro- 
vided with a sort of elevator operated by a crank 
and gearing and capable of accommodating eight 
persons at a time. This observatory, which cost 
about six hundred dollars, was abandoned as a 
complete failure after being used a part of the first 
season. It stood until the summer of 1856, when it 
was torn down. 

No further buildings were erected on Mount 
Washington until after the building of the carriage 
road and of the railway, when the necessary struc- 
tures for carrying on the operation of these means of 
visiting the Summit were erected. Soon the increase 
of business due to these agencies for making the 
peak more accessible necessitated the provision of 
greater accommodations for the shelter of visitors. 
From time to time, also, buildings for various other 
uses were added to the Summit settlement. The re- 
cording of the history of the later hotel and of the 
other structures referred to, however, properly fol- 
lows the stories of the carriage road and the railway, 
and will be set down in due course after the latter 
have been related. 

The construction of the first-named means of 
access to the summit of Mount Washington is a 
work which bears eloquent witness to the enterprise, 
courage, and persistence of its projector and builders. 
The road, which extends from the Pinkham Notch 
Road, near the site of the Glen House, to the Sum- 
mit, is eight miles long and makes an ascent of forty- 
six hundred feet, the average grade being one foot in 

234 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

eight and the steepest, one foot in six. To General 
David O. Macomber, of Middletown, Connecticut, 
belongs the credit for originating this undertaking. 
The Mount Washington Road Company was char- 
tered July I, 1853, with a capital of fifty thousand 
dollars. The company was organized at the Alpine 
House, in Gorham, on August 31 of that year, 
General Macomber being chosen president. The 
road was surveyed by Engineers C. H. V. Cavis and 
Ricker. Two incidents of the surveying period have 
been preserved by John H. Spaulding. One is the 
measurement of the height of the Mountain by 
actual survey made by the engineers in 1854, who 
arrived at 6284 feet as a result. The other incident 
was the dining, on July 16 of that year, of President 
Macomber, Engineer Cavis, and Mr. Spaulding in 
the snow arch. It was then two hundred and sixty- 
six feet long, eighty-four feet wide, and forty feet 
high to the roof. Mr. Spaulding records that, during 
the time spent in this somewhat rash action, icy 
cold water constantly dripped down around them 
and a heavy thundershower passed over them. 

Construction was begun by Contractors Rich and 
Myers in or about the year 1855,^ and within a 
year two miles were completed and further con- 
struction was under way. The section ending at 
the Ledge just above the Halfway House, a total 
distance of four miles from the beginning, was 
finished in 1856. Then the pioneer company failed, 
because of the great cost of construction. A new 

^ Mr. Spaulding notes that in June, 1855, the road is "in rapid 
progress towards completion." 

235 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

company, the Mount Washington Summit Road 
Company, was, however, incorporated two or three 
years later, and this company finished the road in 
1861. Joseph S. Hall, one of the builders of the 
Tip-Top House, was the contractor for this work, 
and John P. Rich, the first contractor, was the 
superintendent. The road, which is splendidly 
built and which winds up the Mountain in long 
gradual lines of ascent, places where there are steep 
grades being rendered safe by stone walls on the 
lower side, was opened for travel on August 8, 1861. 

The first passenger vehicle which arrived at the 
Summit — an old-fashioned Concord stage-coach 
with eight horses — was driven by George W. Lane, 
for many years in charge of the Fabyan House 
stables.^ 

The memory of Mr. Rich, who had so much to 
do with the construction of the road and who died 
in California in 1863, has been preserved by a 
tablet set in a rock by the roadside near the Glen 
and bearing a suitable inscription. Witness to the 
excellence of the engineering and construction work 
on the road, as well as of the care with which it has 
been maintained, is borne by its use for now more 
than fifty years and its well-preserved condition. 

Striking as was this achievement in rendering the 
top of New England's highest mountain more ac- 

^ Landlord Thompson, of the Glen House, drove to the Summit 
in a light wagon with one horse, just before the road was completed, 
thus beating his rival for the honor, Colonel Hitchcock. Two men 
assisted in keeping the wagon right side up as he drove over the un- 
completed last section of the road. Landlord Thompson was also in 
the first coach driven up. 

236 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

cesslble, it was soon to be surpassed in boldness of 
conception and skill and successfulness of execution 
by another undertaking directed to the same end. 
I refer to the building of the Mount Washington 
Railway, the first railway of its kind in the world. 
The projector of this enterprise was Sylvester Marsh, 
a native son of New Hampshire and a Yankee 
genius. The idea that it was wholly practicable to 
apply the principle of the cog rail to a mountain 
railroad and the carrying out of the conception was 
only one of this ingenious New Englander's services 
to the world. Having gone West in the winter of 
1833-34, when thirty years old, Mr. Marsh became 
one of the founders of Chicago, prominent in the 
promotion of every public enterprise there. He was 
the originator of meat-packing in that city and the 
inventor of many of the appliances used in that 
process, especially.those connected with the employ- 
ment of steam. The dried-meal process was another 
of his inventions. 

When on a visit to his native State in 1852, he 
one day made an ascent of Mount Washington with 
a friend, the Reverend A. C. Thompson, of Roxbury. 
It was while struggling up the Mountain, or perhaps 
a little later, that the idea came to him that a rail- 
way to the Summit was feasible and could be made 
profitable. Very soon he set to work and invented 
the mountain-climbing mechanism, and then with 
characteristic energy and perseverance he fought 
his project through to completion against much 
opposition and ridicule. In 1858, he exhibited a 
model of the line to the State Legislature and asked 

237 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

for a charter to build steam railways up Mount 
Washington and Mount Lafayette. The charter 
was granted on June 25 of that year, one legislator, 
it is said, suggesting the satirical amendment that 
the gentleman should also receive permission to 
build a railway to the moon. Pecuniary support for 
so apparently ridiculous a proposal was difficult 
to obtain, and before anything could be done the 
breaking-out of the Civil War postponed action for 
several years more. Finally a company was formed, 
the necessary capital being furnished by the rail- 
roads connecting the White Mountain region with 
Boston and New York. At the outset, however, 
Mr. Marsh had to rely chiefly on his own resources, 
but little encouragement being received until an 
engine was actually running over a part of the route. 
Construction of the railway was at length begun in 
May, 1866, nearly eight years after the granting of 
the charter. In order to render its starting-point 
accessible, a turnpike from Fabyan's to the Base 
was begun in April of that same year. 

As the railway is so important in the history of 
mountain railways a brief description of its mechan- 
ical features may not be out of order. The road is 
of the type known as the "cog road," or the rack 
and pinion railroad. The indispensable peculiarity 
of the invention is the heavy central rail, which 
consists of two parallel pieces of steel connected by 
numerous strong cross-pins or bolts, into the spaces 
between which the teeth of the cog wheels on the 
locomotive play. As the driving-wheel revolves, the 
engine ascends or descends, resting on the outer 

238 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

rails, which are of the ordinary pattern and which 
are four feet seven inches apart. 

The first locomotive, which was designed by Mr. 
Marsh and was built by Campbell and Whittier, of 
Boston, was used until entirely worn out. Exhibited 
at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, it is now 
in the Field Museum of Natural History. It had 
a vertical boiler and no cab, and thus resembled a 
hoisting engine in appearance. The present type of 
locomotive was designed by Walter Aiken, ^ of Frank- 
lin, New Hampshire, who was the man to work out 
the practical details of Mr. Marsh's idea and who 
supervised the construction of the road. The engine 
is furnished with two pairs of cylinders and driving 
gears, thus guaranteeing ample security in case of ac- 
cident. The car is provided with similar cog wheels 
to those on the engine and with brakes of its own, 
insuring safety independent of the engine. There 
are separate brakes on each axle of the car and an 
additional safety device on both it and the engine 
in the form of a toothed wheel and ratchet. This 
latter mechanism affords the greatest protection 
against accident, as it prevents the wheels of the 
car or of the engine from turning backward. It is, 
of course, raised during the descent, but it can be 

^ From an article by Mr. Aiken in Among the Clouds for September 
I, 1877, it appears that Herrick Aiken, of Franklin, about 1850 
conceived the idea of ascending Mount Washington by means of a 
cog railroad. He went so far as to build a model of a roadbed and 
track with the cog rail and to make two ascents of the Mountain on 
horseback for the purpose of determining the feasibility of the route, 
etc.; but he was dissuaded from undertaking the project by promi- 
nent railroad men whom he consulted and who thought it impracti- 
cable and unlikely to be profitable. 

239 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

dropped instantly into place in an emergency. The 
car is pushed up the Mountain and descends behind 
the locomotive, and is not fastened to it. The train 
moves very slowly, so slowly, indeed, that a person 
can easily, if necessary, step on or off while it is 
under full headway. Seventy minutes are required 
to make the trip up. The safety appliances, the 
powerfully constructed locomotive, the moderate 
speed, the constant inspection, and the experienced 
men concerned in the operation of the road have 
eliminated the element of danger from the trip. No 
passenger has yet been injured in all the years since 
the road's opening. 

The route was surveyed and located by Colonel 
Orville E. Freeman, of Lancaster, New Hampshire, 
a son-in-law of the pioneer, Ethan Allen Crawford. 
Very appropriately, the course of the railway is 
substantially that of the latter's early path to the 
Summit. The length of the road is about three and 
one third miles, and the elevation overcome is about 
three thousand seven hundred feet. The average 
grade is one foot in four and the maximum thirteen 
and one half inches in three feet, or one thousand 
nine hundred and eighty feet to the mile. With 
the exception of the railway up Mount Pilatus in 
Switzerland, the Mount Washington Railway is the 
steepest in the world of the type of which it is the 
pioneer. The road is built on a wooden trestle all 
the way except a short distance near the Base, 
where the track lies on the surface of the ground. 

But to return to its history. The first quarter of 
a mile was finished in 1866, and a test was made 

240 




9 > 
z; 5 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

which demonstrated the practicability of the inven- 
tion. A half-mile more was completed in 1867, and 
on August 14, 1868, the railway was opened to 
Jacob's Ladder.^ Before work on it stopped that 
year, construction was carried to the Lizzie Bourne 
monument. The road was finished the following 
year, being opened to the Summit for business in 
July. The cost of construction and equipment was 
$139,500. 

At the time of its completion, the nearest railroad 
station was at Littleton, twenty-five miles distant. 
Every piece of material for the construction of the 
railway and the locomotive and cars, had to be 
hauled through the woods, it should be remembered, 
by ox teams. 

I have spoken of the beginning of the construc- 
tion of the turnpike to the Base. This was completed 
in 1869, and for many years afforded the only means 
of access to the railway, passengers being brought 
by stage over it from Fabyan's. It was owned for 
some years by the Boston and Maine Railroad, but 
has recently been turned over to the State. 

A word more as to the railway's projector and 
inventor. Leaving Chicago, he returned to live in 
New Hampshire, settling at Littleton in 1864. He 
passed the closing years of his life in Concord, where 
he removed in 1879 and where he died in December, 
1884, at the age of eighty-one, a public-spirited and 
highly respected citizen. He was asked to build the 

^ This name was transferred to the railroad from the path, having 
been given to the steep crag at this place, many years before the 
building of the railway. 

241 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

railway up the Rigi in Switzerland, which is pat- 
terned to some extent after the Mount Washington 
Railway, but he decHned. 

During the latter's construction, a Swiss engi- 
neer ^ visited the American railroad, and he was 
allowed to take back with him drawings of the 
machinery and track. 

After the Swiss railroad was completed (1871), 
Mr. Marsh said of it, "They have made a much 
better road than mine. Mine was an experiment. 
When proved to be a success, they went ahead with 
confidence and built a permanent road." 

A noteworthy incident of the first season of the 
Mount Washington Railway was the visit of Presi- 
dent Grant, whose first term had begun the pre- 
ceding March. His trip up Mount Washington was 
made in the course of a tour through the Mountains 
that summer with Mrs. Grant and some of their 
children. Another episode of this excursion has been 

^ This was Mr. Nicholas Riggenbach, then superintendent of the 
Central Swiss Railway, who took the first steam locomotive into 
Switzerland in 1847, and who appears to have independently con- 
ceived the idea of a new system of track and locomotives for the as- 
cent of mountains. On August 12, 1863, he took out a patent for a 
rack railway and a locomotive for operating the same, but nothing 
further seems to have been done with the idea by him until after the 
visit to America mentioned in the text. On his return he associated 
himself with two others, got a concession, and built the road up the 
Rigi. The rack rail designed by Riggenbach is a distinct improve- 
ment upon that used by Marsh. Instead of a round tooth, it employs 
a taper tooth, which experience has shown to be preferable, inas- 
much as it not only insures safe locking of the gear at different 
depths, but resists more efficiently the tendency of the gear-wheel 
to climb the rack — a further security against derailment. Riggen- 
bach's type of tooth, with modifications, is that now used on rack 
railways. (From F. A. Talbot's Railway Wonders oj the World. 
1913) 

242 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

preserved.^ The general, as is well known, was a 
great lover of horses. One can imagine, therefore, 
his keen enjoyment, as he sat on the box with 
the driver, Edmund Cox, of a stage-coach which 
traveled, drawn by six horses, from the Sinclair 
House in Bethlehem to the Profile House, more 
than eleven miles, in fifty-eight minutes. 

Accidents on the carriage road, so strong are the 
vehicles and horses used and so careful and reliable 
the drivers employed, have been few. The first by 
which any passengers were injured, and the only 
serious one I have found recorded, occurred on July 
3, 1880, about a mile below the Halfway House. A 
company of excursionists from Michigan had been 
visiting the Summit that day, and the last party of 
them to descend, consisting of nine persons, were 
thrown violently into the woods and on the rocks 
by the overturning of the six-horse mountain wagon 
in which they were riding. One woman was in- 
stantly killed and several other occupants were 
more or less injured. The husband of the dead 
woman was riding at her side and escaped with a 
few bruises. 

It seems that the driver, one of the oldest and 
most experienced on the road and one who had 
himself uttered the warning, "There should be no 
fooling, no chaffing, and no drinking on that road," 
had failed to practice what he preached, and, while 
waiting for his party at the Summit, had indulged 
in liquor. This lapse, most serious under the clr- 

1 Recorded by Alice Bartlett Stevens in the Granite Monthly for 
February, 1903. 

243 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

cumstances, was discovered shortly after starting, 
and the passengers thereupon left the wagon and 
walked to the Halfway House, four miles down. 
There, on being assured by one of the employees of 
the Carriage Road Company that there was no 
dangerous place below that point, and on his telling 
them further that he thought it would be safe for 
them to ride the remainder of the way with the same 
driver, they resumed their seats, only to meet, a few 
minutes later, in rounding a curve at too great a 
speed, with the sad mishap that has been described. 

As has been already stated, no passenger has ever 
been even injured on the Railway. The only mishap 
of any consequence, and a most peculiar one, oc- 
curred about the middle of July, 1897, when a train 
consisting of a locomotive, passenger car, and bag- 
gage car was wrecked. A heavy gust of wind struck 
the train, which was standing near the Summit, 
with such force as to start it off down the line. It 
was found that about a quarter of a mile down the 
engine and baggage car had jumped the track, had 
turned over and over while falling a hundred feet 
or more into the gulf, and had become total wrecks. 
The man sent out to investigate on a slide-board 
reported that he saw nothing of the passenger car, 
but it was later discovered that this had left the 
track at a curve near Jacob's Ladder, had turned 
over, and had been completely demolished. Fortu- 
nately no one was on board. 

Mention has just been made of the slide-board. 
This interesting contrivance was invented to meet 
the need of rapid transit for the workmen employed 

244 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

in track repairing and the like. By this means an 
experienced rider can go from the Summit to the 
Base in three minutes. The sHde-board is about 
three feet long, rests lengthwise on the center rail, 
and is grooved so as to slide on it. The braking 
mechanism, by which the board is kept under such 
perfect control that it can be stopped almost in- 
stantly whenever necessary, is very simple. On 
either side of the board is pivoted to it a handle, 
to which is attached, near the pivot, a piece of 
iron bent in a peculiar form so as to project under- 
neath the rail. By pulling up the handle this piece 
of iron is made to grip the flange of the rail very 
tightly. 

It was formerly the practice for the roadmaster 
or his assistant to descend on a slide-board before 
the noon train every day, going slowly enough to 
make a careful inspection of the track. The death 
of an employee in performing this hazardous act 
a few years ago, which accident cost the Railway 
Company several thousand dollars in damages and 
made evident the liability to mishaps of this kind, 
has caused the discontinuance of the use of this 
dangerous means of conveyance. 

A picturesque employment of the slide-boards in 
former days was as a "newspaper train." This 
novel enterprise was carried on in the early nineties, 
when the coaching parades at Bethlehem and North 
Conway were at their height, and there was thereby 
created a great demand for the issues of Among the 
Clouds, which contained accounts of the festivities. 
So that readers in those towns might have copies of 

245 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the paper at their breakfast tables, some of the 
skillful coasters used to transport the morning edi- 
tion down the Mountain before daylight. 

After the completion of the railway, steps had 
immediately to be taken to remedy the woefully 
inadequate provisions for feeding and sheltering vis- 
itors, and, accordingly, in 1872, was begun the build- 
ing of the second "Summit House," the famous 
structure which for thirty-five summers entertained 
so many people of various walks in life, — guides, 
trampers, railroad officials, scientific and literary 
men and women, clergymen, and just ordinary 
persons, — and which had a wealth of associations 
connected with it, and especially clustered about 
its office stove. The undertaking was financed by 
Walter Aiken, manager of the Mount Washington 
Railway, whose tall, stalwart form and sterling 
manhood is one of the memories of the early days, 
and President John E. Lyon, of the Boston, Concord, 
and Montreal Railroad, whose contributions to the 
development of the Mountains have been already 
mentioned. The hotel, which was completed early 
in 1873 and opened in July of that year, was of plain 
outward apppearance, but of the most rigid and solid 
construction possible for a wooden building. The 
difficulties of erecting so large a structure — it could 
accommodate one hundred and fifty guests — on a 
site where severe weather often prevails, are obvious 
as well as are the necessities for strong construction 
and for anchorage by bolts and cables. Two hundred 
and fifty freight trains were required to carry up 
the lumber, and the cost of the hotel, exclusive of 

246 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

the expense for freight (estimated at $10,000), was 

$56,599.57. 

The excellence of the construction is evidenced 
by the fact that the soHd frame withstood gales of 
one hundred and eighty-six miles an hour by actual 
record by the anemometer and very likely of higher 
unrecorded rates when no instrument or observer 
was there to tell the tale. Its cheerful office, with 
its great stove, was a welcome place to many a 
traveler arriving by railway, by carriage road, or by 
trail. Many a day weather conditions were such 
that visitors were marooned in the office during 
their entire stay on the Summit and were devoutly 
grateful for the hotel's hospitable shelter. Almost 
every evening of the season found a group of trav- 
elers whiling away the time enjoying the genial 
warmth of the stove and exchanging experiences of 
their mountain trips. 

Notables who made longer or shorter stays there 
at the various times, as recalled by the editor of 
Among the Clouds, were Lucy Larcom, the poet; 
William C. Prime, editor, traveler, author, and 
angler; his sister-in-law, Annie Trumbull Slosson, 
entomologist and author, who came year after year 
for longer and longer sojourns and who latterly re- 
garded the hotel as her home; the botanist, Edward 
Faxon; the entomologist, J. H. Emerton; E. C. and 
W. H. Pickering, the astronomers ; the naturalist and 
author, Bradford Torrey ; and among the cloth. Rev. 
Dr. W. R. Richards and Rev. Dr. Harry P. Nichols. 

Day visitors of prominence were legion. Some 
names of such, culled from the pages of Among the 

247 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Clouds in 1877, are those of President Hayes * and 
Mrs. Hayes, who, accompanied by WilHam M. 
Evarts, Charles Devens, and D. M. Key, of the 
Cabinet, made their visit to the Summit on August 
20; the Reverend and Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher 
on the same day; Vice-President Wheeler, on Au- 
gust 29, and in September, Sir Lyon Playfair, the 
eminent British statesman and scientist. Other 
noted visitors whose names are found in the records 
of later years were P. T. Barnum, General Joseph 
Hooker, General McClellan, Lord Chief Justice 
Coleridge, of England, who came on August 30, 
1883, Phillips Brooks, Speaker Cannon, Lieutenant 
Peary, and Sefior Romero, the Mexican Minister. 
In 1880, the eminent Scottish professor, William 
Garden Blaikie, spent "a night on Mount Washing- 
ton," an account of which experience he gave in a 
typically British article with this title, published in 
Good Words in June, 1881. He went up by train and 
walked down the carriage road. As there was a 
cloud on top when he arrived, he walked down be- 
low to see the view and the sunset. " Nothing could 
be finer," he declared, than the dawn he wit- 
nessed. 

The versatile English writer and scientist of Ca- 
nadian birth. Grant Allen, was another foreign 
visitor to Mount Washington who deserves a pass- 
ing mention. From his graphic and often facetious 
account of his brief visit to the Mountains in 1886, 
written for Longman'' s Magazine, we learn that he 
made the ascent by train and that he was much 
* This was President Hayes's fifth visit to the Summit. 
248 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

interested In the botany — his specialty — and the 
gastronomy of the region. 

The first proprietor of this new Summit House 
was Captain John W. Dodge, of Hampton Falls, 
New Hampshire, who also became postmaster by 
Government appointment when the Mount Wash- 
ington post-office was established July i, 1874, and 
who died in June of the following year. For nine 
seasons, a period ending with 1883, his widow, Har- 
riet D. Dodge, successfully managed the house. 
Charles G. Emmons had charge for the two following 
seasons, and from 1886 to the end, the hotel was 
leased to the Barron, Merrill, and Barron Company 
by the railway company into whose hands, after the 
deaths of Mr. Aiken and Mr. Lyon, their interest 
passed. The Summit House was enlarged by the 
addition of an ell in 1874 and extensive improve- 
ments were made in 1895, 1901, and 1905. 

From time to time, as need arose or circumstances 
required, buildings for various uses were erected on 
the Summit until a considerable summer settlement 
had been created. Besides such essential structures 
as the train shed, built in 1870 and subsequently 
blown down in a winter gale and rebuilt,^ and the 
stage office, erected in 1878 by the owners of the 
carriage road for the accommodation of the agents 
and drivers of the stage line and sometimes used 
as sleeping quarters by trampers, several buildings 
came into existence for special purposes, which 

^ A third train shed — the one burned — was built about 1890. 
The second one, having become disused and dilapidated, was taken 
down in 1904. 

249 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

structures demand more attention than mere men- 
tion, either because of their uses or because of their 
associations. 

When in May, 1871, the Government took up the 
work of maintaining weather-bureau service on the 
Summit, the observers, who were at that period 
detailed for this duty the year round by the Signal 
Service of the Army, were quartered in the old rail- 
way station, but in 1874 ^ wooden building, one 
and a half stories high, the so-called "Signal Sta- 
tion," was erected for their use. 

At the beginning of 1880, the buildings on the 
Summit were the old Summit House, which, as has 
been stated, was then used as a dormitory for the 
hotel employees, the old Tip-Top House, the front 
room of which then served as the printing-office of 
Among the Clouds, the stage office, the train shed, 
the Signal Station, and the Summit House. Two 
more buildings were added to the group during the 
years soon following, to stand with the others until 
that fateful evening in June, 1908, when the results 
of so many years' development were reduced in a 
few hours to ashes and blackened ruins. 

In the year first named the railway company 
erected a strong wooden tower, twenty-seven feet 
high and of pyramidal shape, on high ground near 
the southwest corner of the Summit House. It 
overlooked all the buildings and became a favor- 
ite observatory. For several summers it was used 
by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 
in the triangulation of the region. In 1892, the tower 
was carried up another story and, during that season 

250 




I n 5 TrnTTrrrmrL 

. , ill «ss' ■' 




SUMMIT HOUSE AND OBSERVATORY, MOUNT WASHINGTON 
ABOUT 1S95 











n <"■ V, 




1 nr I 




li nil « 




- t — rrr 


ilii 




sill 




nn 




III! 




< 




'■^^^ t^ 



THE NEW SUMMIT HOUSE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 
ERECTED AND OPENED IN 1915 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

only, a powerful searchlight was operated on it. 
Having fallen into decay and having become un- 
safe, this, the second observatory built on the 
Mountain, was pulled down in 1902. 

Four years after the erection of the tower came 
the last addition to the group of buildings. This 
was a home for the Mountain newspaper. Among 
the Clouds, which had outgrown its quarters in the 
old Tip-Top House. In the autumn of 1884 was 
built the compact and cozy little office so well known 
to visitors for nearly twenty-five years. It contained 
a fully equipped printing-plant, with a Hoe cylinder 
press and a steam engine (superseded a short time 
before the great fire by a seven horse-power gasoline 
engine). Many a tourist here saw for the first time 
a newspaper plant in operation. 

The same year saw another change in the Moun- 
tain buildings, for, as has been recorded before, the 
old Summit House was that year taken down, a 
wooden cottage being erected in its stead. Mention 
having just been made of the printing-ofhce of 
Among the Clouds, and the establishment of that 
newspaper belonging chronologically to the period 
now under review, accounts of this unique jour- 
nalistic enterprise and also of another similar un- 
dertaking may perhaps be interjected at this 
point. 

The distinction of being the first and for many 
years the only newspaper printed regularly on the 
top of a mountain, and the further distinction of 
being the oldest summer-resort newspaper in Amer- 
ica, belong to Mount Washington's daily journal. 

251 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

It was founded In 1877 by Mr. Henry M. Burt, of 
Springfield, Massachusetts, who had been connected 
with the Springfield Republican and various other 
papers, among them the New England Homestead, 
which he founded. In 1866, Mr. Burt pubHshed 
"Burt's Guide to the Connecticut Valley and the 
White Mountains," the preparation of which 
brought him first to Mount Washington. While 
spending a stormy day at the Summit House, in 
1874, the thought of printing a newspaper on top of 
the Mountain came to him, resulting in the starting 
of Among the Clouds three years later, the first issue 
appearing on July 18, 1877. This unique and daring 
undertaking gained the admiration of all visitors, 
and the paper with so peculiarly appropriate a 
name soon filled a recognized position in White 
Mountain life. For eight summers it was printed in 
the old Tip-Top House. Thereafter until 1908, it was 
published in its own building, the erection of which 
in 1884 has been recorded. The genial editor, during 
the twenty-two years in which he conducted the 
paper, gained a host of personal friends among those 
frequenting the White Mountains and those carry- 
ing on business in the region. Since his death in 
March, 1899, his son, Frank H. Burt, has been its 
editor and publisher. 

Before the great fire of 1908 deprived Among the 
Clouds of its well-equipped and appropriately lo- 
cated home, two editions were printed daily, the 
principal one being Issued in the early morning. At 
I P.M. the noon edition, containing a list of the names 
of visitors arriving by the morning train, was ready 

252 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

for purchase as a souvenir by the traveler before 
the train departed on the downward trip. 

Besides recording all events of interest relating 
to Mount Washington, together with news of the 
leading Mountain resorts, many articles of historical 
and scientific value have appeared in its columns, 
all of which contents have combined to make a 
complete file of Among the Clouds at any time, and 
now especially since the fire, a treasure indeed. 

In view of the staggering blow that the paper re- 
ceived in the loss of its home and equipment before 
the opening of the season of 1908, it was thought 
best to omit for that summer the daily edition, 
which was done. Thus, for the first time in a gener- 
ation the history of the summer's events had to go 
untold. The enterprising editors, however, far from 
being discouraged and from giving up all for lost 
even that season, showed their quality by preparing 
a "magazine number," containing a very complete 
and interesting record of the fire by pen and cam- 
era, and many facts and reminiscences concerning 
Mount Washington. 

The failure to rebuild the settlement upon the 
Summit is responsible for Among the Clouds not 
being able to regain its ancient and proper seat, but 
publication was resumed on July 5, 1910, and the 
paper is now temporarily established at the Base. 

The other journalistic enterprise referred to is 
that of a newspaper long widely known among 
Mountain visitors, The White Mountain Echo and 
Tourists' Register, the founding of which is almost 
contemporary with that of Among the Clouds. It 

253 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

was in 1878, at Bethlehem, that The Echo was 
started, the date of the first issue being July 13, 
and it has continued to be published there since. 
It is not, however, a local paper, but is devoted to 
the interests of the entire White Mountain region. 
Its founder and editor for twenty years, Mr. Mar- 
kinfield Addey, had an interesting career. He was 
an Englishman, who, after serving in the publish- 
ing house of Chapman and Hall, had become a pub- 
lisher on his own account. In 1857, when he was 
thirty-nine years old, his eyesight failed and he re- 
tired from business. The following year he came 
to America, where his eyesight improved. Twenty 
years later he founded The White Mountain Echo. 
Having entirely lost his sight in 1898, he gave up 
the editorship of The Echo, and returned to England, 
settling at Louth, in Lincolnshire. There he lived 
twelve years longer, dying November 18, 1910, at 
the age of ninety-two. He was "a bright, cheerful 
little man, of a very sanguine nature," always active 
in promoting by his pen and his influence the good 
of the Mountain region he had come to love so well. 
He lived to know of the carrying-out of many of the 
improvements he so earnestly and so long before 
had advocated. 

The only White Mountain summit other than 
Mount Washington, upon which anything more 
than a temporary shelter exists to-day, is Mount 
Moosilauke. The beautiful Mount Kearsarge ^ of 
the Bartlett-Conway region formerly bore upon its 

^ Now to be called, in accordance with a decision (1915) of the 
United States Board of Geographic Names, "Mount Pequawket." 

254 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

top a small hotel, built, in 1848 or 1849,^ by Caleb 
Frye, Nathaniel Frye, John C. Davis, and Moses 
Chandler, which was kept open for several years 
and then fell into disuse. Andrew Dinsmore bought 
it in 1868 or 1869, put it in thorough repair, and re- 
opened it. The weather-beaten old structure was 
blown down in a tempest in November, 1883. Mr. 
Dinsmore collected the fragments and rebuilt the 
structure on a smaller scale. This has been aban- 
doned of late years and is rapidly falling into decay. 
It is now the property of the Appalachian Mountain 
Club, the building and ten acres on the summit 
having been given to the Club in 1902 by Mrs. 
C. E. Clay, of Chatham, New Hampshire. A small 
one-room house of logs and poles was built on Mount 
Moriah by Colonel Hitchcock, of the Alpine House, 
probably in 1854. -^ road up having been con- 
structed under his auspices, that mountain for a 
time rivaled Mount Washington in popularity. In 
the sixties a rude house for the protection of climbers 
stood on the crest of Mount Lafayette, but, except 
for the low stone walls, it had disappeared by 

1875.' 

Moosilauke was first climbed by Chase Whitcher, 
who, in 1773, when a boy of twenty, came from 
Salisbury, Massachusetts, and settled in Warren, 
devoting himself to hunting. On this occasion he 
was following a moose. He is said to have thought 

^ So Mrs. Mason. Sweetser says, "built in 1845." 
2 The substantial Peak House on Mount Chocorua, which was 
built in the early nineties, was not located on the summit, but at 
the base of the cone. This house was blown down on September 26, 
1915- 

255 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the summit "a cold place." ^ Mrs. Daniel Patch, 
the first white woman who ever stood upon this 
summit, evidently had a different reception as to 
weather from that given to Whitcher, for she thought 
it a pleasant place, and, having brought her teapot 
with her, made herself a cup of tea over a fire 
kindled from bleached hackmatack boughs. 

The Tip-Top House of Mount Moosilauke — it 
was first called the "Prospect House" and is also 
sometimes spoken of as the "Summit House" — 
was originall}^ a low and massive stone building, 
erected in i860 by Darius Swain and James Clem- 
ent. It stands on the south side of the crest or 
north peak. 

The house was opened on July 4, i860, with a 
grand celebration, in which more than a thousand 
people took part. Music was furnished by the New- 

^ The first printed account of an ascent appeared in the American 
Monthly Magazine for November, 1817, in an article on "The Altitude 
of Moose-Hillock in New Hampshire, ascertained barometrically," 
by Alden Partridge, Captain of Engineers. Captain Partridge, who 
was a graduate of West Point, founded in 1820 a military school at 
Norwich, Vermont, which was incorporated in 1834 as Norwich 
University. He was president of it until 1843. He appears twice in 
the pages of the Crawford History. In the autumn of 182 1, he came 
to Mr. Crawford's with a number of cadets, and Mr. Crawford, being 
unable on account of lameness to act as guide, Mr. Rosebrook, his 
nearest neighbor, was sent for to pilot the party up Mount Wash- 
ington. Again, on October 2, 1824, Captain Partridge came to 
Crawford's with fifty-two cadets. Taking a part of them with him, 
he went to " the camp" for the night, so that he might have the 
next day for making some barometrical observations. The remainder 
of the cadets, who overran the somewhat meager accommodations 
of Crawford's house, — some sleeping in beds, some on the floor, 
some in the barn, and some, for a time, even out-of-doors beside 
the fence, — made the ascent the next day, meeting the captain and 
his companions coming down. Captain Partridge computed the 
height of Mount Washington to be 6234 feet. 

256 . 




SUMMIT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON IN 1854 
Tip-Top House, Old Summit House, and First Observatory 




^'■f I^ 










"■ iiiwiiliMfti"'iiiii 1 1 : 




TlP-rOP HOUSK ON MOUNT MOOSILAUKE 



MOUNT WASHINGTON 

bury brass band, and the citizens, a whole regiment 
of them, marshaled by Colonel Stevens M. Dow, 
marched and countermarched upon the mountain- 
top. The Honorable Thomas J. Smith delivered a 
patriotic oration, and the celebration concluded with 
a performance by a company of real Indians, who 
sang, danced, and sounded the war-whoop. Another 
incident of the day was the driving of a large two- 
horse pleasure wagon up the mountain by Daniel 
Q. Clement. 

William Little was the first landlord of the Pros- 
pect House. Following him, Ezekiel A. Clement 
kept it for one season, and afterwards James Clem- 
ent was "mine host " for years and years. The open- 
ing of the Prospect House stimulated several citizens 
of Warren to begin the keeping of summer boarders. 

An occurrence of the first season of the hotel was 
the visit, on August 29, of Philip Hadley, ninety 
years old, who walked all the way from his home in 
Bradford, Vermont, to the top of the mountain. 

The Moosilauke Mountain Road Company was 
incorporated in June, 1870, by John E. Lyon, 
Joseph A. Dodge, Daniel Q. Clement, Samuel B. 
Page, David G. Marsh, G. F. Putnam, and James 
Clement. The length of the road, which was im- 
mediately put under construction, is four and a 
third miles. The ascent is not difficult, and the road 
is kept in good condition. It starts from Merrill's 
Mountain House, at the base of the mountain, and 
meets the long ridge a short distance north of the 
south peak, and thence follows the ridge in a north- 
erly direction. 

257 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

After the completion of the carriage road, the 
number of visitors to the summit was, naturally, 
much increased. In consequence the house was 
enlarged in 1872 by the addition of a wooden ell a 
story and a half high, and in 1881 a wooden super- 
structure was added to the original stone house, the 
capacity being thus raised to from thirty-five to 
fifty guests. The remoteness of Mount Moosilauke 
from the centers of White Mountain summer life 
and its position off the main routes of travel have 
made its summit a place far less visited by fre- 
quenters of the Mountains and tourists than it 
would otherwise be and less than it merits for its 
own beautiful configuration ^ and for the wonderful 
views in all directions. 

^ "With one bold curve it [the ridge] sweeps away in air. . . . 
There can be nothing finer than this curving crest," wrote the late 
Colonel Higginson in 1880. 



XII 

some noteworthy white mountain 
"characters" 

A NAME sometimes given to the Summit of Mount 
Washington in the early days was "Trinity Height," 
which must have been current before 1845, as it 
occurs in the "Crawford History," published in that 
year. It has also been handed down in connection 
with a peculiar episode recorded by Mr. Spaulding. 
In 1850, a man afflicted with religious mania re- 
garded himself as having obtained by lawful title 
ownership of the top of Mount Washington, and, 
erecting gateways upon all the bridle paths, he 
exacted one dollar as toll from every person who 
ascended. He also issued in the papers of the day 
a flaming proclamation, of which the following is 
said to be a true copy : — 

PROCLAMATION. 

FOURTH OF JULY ON 
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 

There will be a solemn congregation upon Trinity 
Height, or Summit of Mount Washington, on the Fourth 
Day of July, a.d, 1851, and ist year of the Theocracy, or 
Jewish Christianity, to dedicate to the coming of the 
Ancient of Days, in the glory of his Kingdom, and to the 
marriage of the Lamb; and the literal organization in 
this generation of the Christian or purple and royal De- 

259 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

mocracy (let no man profane that name!), or the thousand 
thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand of the 
people of the Saints of the most high God of every nation 
and Denomination into the greatness of God's kingdom 
and dominion under the whole heavens ; and there will be 
a contribution for this purpose from all who are willing, in 
the beauty of holiness, from the dawn of that day. 
John Coffin Nazro, 

Israel of Jerusalem. 

"The appointed fourth of July was," says Mr. 
Spaulding in his book, "as dark and rainy as any, 
perhaps, that ever shrouded Mount Washington in 
wildly-fiying clouds ; and Nazro, meeting with strong 
opposition in toll-gathering, relinquished his temple- 
building designs, and, throwing away his gate-keys 
to the entrance of this mighty altar, retired to 
United States service, where, perchance, he may be 
now plotting the way to fortune among the clouds." 

Years after the erection of the old Tip-Top House, 
a wrinkled, tanned, thin-faced man, who signed, 
"John C. Nazro, U.S.N.," was one day among the 
crowd registered at the hotel. Chaplain Nazro 
stated that the object of his visit was to collect the 
rents from those who were trespassing upon his 
rights. His friends, anticipating personal injury to 
him if he pressed his claims, dissuaded him from 
doing so. Being told by the occupiers of the houses 
that they paid annual rent to David Pingree, of 
Salem, Massachusetts, he took that name and 
address, but nothing was ever heard further from 
him. 

It appears that Nazro's claim to the top of the 
Mountain originated in a joke practiced upon him 

260 



WHITE MOUNTAIN CHARACTERS 

by Thomas Crawford, with whom he sojourned at 
the Notch House for some time. Mr. Crawford 
proposed to give him, in exchange for the manu- 
script of a history of the White Mountains, a good 
title deed to the Summit of Mount Washington, 
and, upon the manuscript being forthcoming, a writ- 
ten agreement was entered into, Crawford Httle 
thinking that any action would be taken in con- 
nection with it. The deed was, however, duly reg- 
istered in the Coos County Registry of Deeds at 
Lancaster, and possession was then taken of the 
property in the manner already related. 

A peculiar character whom many people still re- 
member was the "Man at the Pool," John Merrill. 
In his time, indeed, he was as much an object of 
interest as that Franconia-Notch attraction itself. 
According to his own account he was born in Bristol, 
New Hampshire, in 1816 or thereabouts. In the 
course of his wanderings, he came to the Pool in 
1853, and on this first visit he happened to meet 
a party of forty sight-seers who wished to get near 
to the fall. To accommodate them he set to work 
and constructed a rude boat, which he lowered down 
to the river by means of a rope. Thus, by chance he 
found what was to be his summer vocation for many 
years, as he was induced to return annually, and 
thus became an institution at the Pool. He spent 
his summers there until about 1887. His winters 
he was accustomed to pass in Wisconsin, from which 
place The White Mountain Echo last heard from him 
in 1888, when he made a request that the paper 
might be sent to him. 

261 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

From the Pool he carried away annually enough 
money to provide a comfortable living for the rest 
of the year. Indeed, it is said that the gratuities 
given him by tourists for paddling them over the 
Pool and for expounding to them his cosmogony were 
in the aggregate far from inconsiderable. While he 
was undoubtedly an oddity, it is hinted that there 
was method in his peculiarity, some of his notions 
and characteristics being assumed for their value in 
extracting money from visitors to this beauty spot. 

Visitors to Bethlehem in the seventies and earlier 
used to see or hear about the aged eccentric, Sir 
Isaac Newton Gay, who celebrated his eighty-second 
birthday there, July i6, 1878. Although born in 
Old Ipswich, Massachusetts, he had at that time 
lived eighty-one years in Bethlehem, his family 
having been the seventh to arrive in the town. In 
1 855 , he built a one-story loosely constructed building 
in the beeches opposite the Maplewood Inn. Not 
only was the man himself an oddity, but his "cha- 
teau" as well. Its interior, his front garden, and 
every nook and cranny in the vicinity of his domi- 
cile formed together a curiosity-shop of accumulated 
fragments. He followed the occupation of farming 
all his life, and entirely lost one eye by an accident 
which happened to him while working in the field. 
"If I had n't been a born philosopher," he is said to 
have remarked on one occasion, " I should have 
been a subject for the lunatic asylum." Questioned 
as to his peculiar name, he averred that it was given 
to him by his mother, and declared that it "suits 
me and I have always borne it." 

262 



WHITE MOUNTAIN CHARACTERS 

There died near the end of April, 1912, the most 
picturesque of latter-day White Mountain charac- 
ters, "English Jack," known to thousands of vis- 
itors to the region as the "Hermit of the White 
Mountains" or the "Crawford Notch Hermit." 
Jack spent his summers in an old shanty, which 
became known as the "House that Jack Built," 
and which was situated, at no great distance from 
the highway, in the woods above the Gate of the 
Notch. His house — "ship" he preferred to call it 
— was reached by paths from several directions, 
signboards indicating the way thither. Here in a 
low-ceilinged room Jack received his visitors. From 
the sale of picture postcards of himself, of a booklet 
containing what purports to be his life-story, told 
in rhyme by James E. Mitchell, and of other souve- 
nirs, he acquired a considerable revenue. 

He usually had some trout in a small aquarium 
just outside his door. Besides fish, it was commonly 
reported that snakes were sometimes articles of 
diet with him.^ Asked about this rather queer taste 
attributed to him, he replied, "Well, they never 
ketched me at it, anyhow." For a beverage other 
than the cool sparkling water of the near-by brook 
or spring. Jack brewed a kind of beer out of hops 
and roots which grew near his hut, with which stim- 
ulant he sometimes regaled his visitors. 

This singular individual, whose real name was 
John Alfred Vials (or Viles), was ninety years old 
when he died. 

^ Among the Clouds for July 25, 1877, tells of his eating half of an 
uncooked striped snake, "with apparent relish." This was done in 
the presence of a party of people from the Crawford House. 

263 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

According to the "Story of Jack," he was born in 
London and left an orphan at twelve, with one 
pound in gold as his whole fortune and with the 
sole ambition of going to sea. For days and days he 
frequented the docks seeking an opportunity to ship 
as cabin-boy, but in vain. Nobody would take him, 
and at last, tired and homesick, he sat down to cry. 
A five-year-old girl came toddling up and told him 
not to cry, saying that she was looking for her 
father's ship and that she was lost as well as he. 
Hand in hand, Jack and little Mary walked along 
the hot street, a sad pair. Mary suddenly saw her 
father on top of a passing omnibus, but he did not 
hear her call to him , so occupied was he in talking with 
his sailor mate. With quickness of mind and action, 
Jack pushed Mary through a door and ran after 
the omnibus, which he caught and mounted, blurt- 
ing out, "Your little girl is gone!" 

At that the father at once started off with Jack 
to find Mary, which they did to the father's and 
little daughter's great joy. When Jack told his tale, 
the grateful Bill Simmonds took the friendless lad 
home with him, and he and his wife cared for him. 
When Bill went to sea again, he got Jack a berth 
as cabin-boy on his ship. After sailing together for 
eight years in different ships, Bill and Jack, who 
had by this time become an able seaman, shipped 
in the good ship Nelson for the Indian Ocean. Jack, 
Mary, and her mother had forebodings that all 
would not be well on this voyage, but the men 
laughed them off and joined the crew. 

Nothing untoward happened until the ship was 
264 



WHITE MOUNTAIN CHARACTERS 

in the Indian Ocean, when one Sunday afternoon 
a terrible gale struck it. After running for hours 
before the hurricane, the ship was wrecked upon a 
small desert island. Jack, Bill, and eleven others 
were all that were saved out of the crew of forty- 
two. Water, fortunately, was found, but the only 
food to be had, after a water-soaked cask of bread 
was consumed, consisted of mussels, crabs, limpets, 
snakes, and the like. Before the rainy season came 
on, disease and death had reduced the company to 
four. For nineteen months the four lived on what 
they could pick up on the barren shore, and then 
Bill succumbed, his dying wish being that Jack 
would look after his wife and Mary and tell them 
about his end. 

A week or so after Bill's death, there came a 
violent hurricane and when the storm had cleared 
off a sail was seen. The shipwrecked men's signal 
had been seen also, and the ship, an American one, 
rescued them. Jack's two companions died before 
they could reach home, and he alone of all the 
Nelson's company returned alive to London. When 
he had reported to the owners the fate of the ship, 
Jack started in search of Mary and her mother. 
After many days he learned that Bill's wife was 
dead and that Mary had been taken to the work- 
house. Jack at once took her out and placed her in 
a school, paying her board for a year, and then took 
ship on a vessel bound for Hongkong. All went well 
with the sailor both on the outgoing and on the 
return voyage. Immediately after the ship's arrival 
at Liverpool, the anxious Jack took the train for 

265 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

London. When, however, he reached the school, he 
received the heart-crushing news that Mary had 
died just a month before. 

Eventually, and against his wish. Jack recovered 
from the severe sickness caused by this blow to his 
hope and love. He then joined the navy, with the 
thought that death might overtake him in that 
service, but although he fought in many skirmishes 
and battles his life was spared through all. He tells 
in the "Story" of fighting in Africa to free the 
slaves, of going with Inglefield to search for Sir 
John Franklin's crew in the frozen North, and of 
serving through the Crimean War and in the Indian 
Mutiny. After traveling land and sea for many 
years, Jack left old England and came to America. 
Drifting to the Crawford Notch to work on the rail- 
road, he came to like the region so much that he 
took up the life of a hermit there in the summer 
months. He used to spend his winters hunting, trap- 
ping, and making souvenirs to sell to his summer 
visitors. Latterly, in the winter. Jack lived with a 
family at Twin Mountain. 

He was well read, it is said, in history and litera- 
ture. He had spent much time and money in search- 
ing through advertisements and otherwise for his 
relatives, but, as he met with no success in this, he 
came to the conclusion that they were all dead. 
He had a kind heart. One way in which he mani- 
fested this was by assisting orphans and other un- 
fortunates among the Mountains. 



XIII 

CASUALTIES ON THE PRESIDENTIAL RANGE — 

THE TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF DR. BALL 

— SOME DESTRUCTIVE LANDSLIDES 

In the summer months the ascent of Mount 
Washington or the traversing of the Presidential 
Range is, if ordinary prudence be exercised, at- 
tended with only a trifling element of danger; just 
enough, it may be thought, to give a little added 
zest to the pleasures attending the excursion. The 
trails, moreover, are now so well worn and marked 
that guides are not needed. Indeed, if climbers 
would refrain from tramping alone, there would be 
almost no danger at all. A piece of recklessness on 
the part of a climber, an accident, and the remote 
chance of being overtaken by a storm are the causes 
of any peril which may be attached to the trip. 
The contingency of a cold and blinding storm above 
the tree-line is, of course, much greater in the au- 
tumn months than in the summer ; the winter ascent 
is obviously hazardous as well as often extremely 
arduous. However, no fatalities have as yet occurred 
in the latter season, when the climb is not often at- 
tempted by any but experienced mountaineers in 
parties. 

It was ascents made in October and September 
that led to the earliest losses of life on the Moun- 
tains. Furthermore, it was not until after the mid- 
dle of the nineteenth century that Mount Washing- 

267 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ton and the other peaks of the Presidential Range 
began to take their toll of human life. In view of 
the great number of ascents made before that time 
and of the circumstances that often the climbers 
were inexperienced persons and that in many cases 
untrodden and unmarked courses were passed over, 
the early record of no lives lost is remarkable. Much 
of the credit for the safety of such expeditions must 
rightfully be given to Ethan Allen Crawford and 
other guides of the pioneer days, to whom not a few 
climbers owed their freedom from injury or from 
a worse fate. 

The first person to perish on the Mountains was 
the victim of his own rashness and obstinacy. 
Frederick Strickland, the eldest son of Sir George 
Strickland, an eminent member of Parliament, came 
to Thomas J. Crawford's Notch House one day in 
the latter part of October, 1851. An heir to large 
estates, a graduate of Cambridge University, and 
a cultivated scholar, he was then about thirty-five 
years of age. The next day after his arrival at the 
hotel, he set out, in company with another English- 
man^ and a guide, to ascend the mountains via the 
Crawford Bridle Path. On the summit of Clinton 
they encountered deep snow and a wintry wind,^ 

^ So Mr. Willey, whose account is very circumstantial. The later 
accounts say nothing of the other Englishman. Mr. Willey gives 
the date of the ascent as October 19, and states that the body was 
found on the second following day. 

2 Mr. Willey says, "When they reached Mount Pleasant, the guide 
and the other Englishman, on account of the cold, and snow on the 
mountain, proposed to return." The later accounts say the party 
encountered a snowstorm. Mr. Spaulding, like Mr. Willey, says 
nothing of a snowstorm. 

268 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

under which conditions the experience of the guide 
had taught him that it was imprudent to go on and 
so he advised a return. Strickland, however, was 
determined to proceed, and, deHvering his horse 
over to the guide, he persisted, in defiance of the 
weather and the advice of the guide, in continuing 
the ascent on foot and alone. The guide and the 
other gentleman returned to Crawford's. 

It had been the plan of Strickland to descend to 
Fabyan's, so Mr. Crawford sent his baggage there, 
with a message to the effect that its owner might 
be expected to stay there that night. As the young 
man did not put in an appearance, Landlord Fabyan 
thought he had returned to the Notch House. The 
next morning, Mr. Crawford, when passing, in- 
quired for the Englishman, and when it was found 
that he had been seen at neither inn, the proprietors 
became alarmed and started in search of him. They 
tracked him to the summit of Washington and 
thence down the Ammonoosuc River, but found 
that day only some of his clothes. On the following 
day, they, with others, continued the search, and, 
after some time, the party discovered his dead body 
lying face downward in the stream. The unfortu- 
nate man had evidently fallen exhausted over a 
precipice. 

It was nearly four years after the perishing of the 
young Englishman, Strickland, before another death 
was added to the record of fatalities on the Moun- 
tains. This time the life lost was that of a young 
woman. Miss Lizzie C. Bourne, of Kennebunk, 
Maine, daughter of Edward E. Bourne, Judge of 

269 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Probate of York County. But she can hardly be 
called a victim of the Mountain's rigor, as her death 
was mostly due to a physical weakness, to the 
aggravation of which the difficulty of climbing the 
final mile or two against a gale of wind contributed. 
The chief element in the pathos of the occurrence 
is the knowledge that she was so near shelter and 
restoratives. The place of her succumbing being 
near the railroad track and the Summit House, and 
its proximate location being marked by a board 
monument, the fact of her fate has thereby become 
more widely known than that of any other person 
who has perished on the Presidential Range. 

The story has been often told. In company with 
her uncle, George W. Bourne, and his daughter, 
Lucy, she started from the Glen House about 2 p.m. 
on September 14, 1855, the party's intention being 
to pass the night on the Summit. They walked up 
the carriage road as far as it was then built and left' 
the Halfway House at four o'clock to complete the 
ascent by the path, which lay plain before them, 
Mr. Myers, the occupant of the House, tried, on 
account of the lateness of the day, to prevail upon 
them to stay there overnight, but "they were de- 
termined," he is reported to have said, "to go." 
About five o'clock, two sons of Samuel F. Spaulding, 
one of the proprietors of the Tip-Top House, met 
them about two miles below the Summit. They 
were then progressing well and evidently anticipat- 
ing no trouble in finishing the climb. The weather 
was clear, but a high wind was soon encountered, 
against which they struggled until after dark. Then, 

270 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

as Miss Lizzie showed signs of increasing exhaustion, 
as they were entirely ignorant of the proximity of 
the Summit, and as the darkness obscured the way 
and a cloud hid the Summit House, it was deemed 
impossible to proceed farther that night. So the 
young women lay down in the path, and Mr. 
Bourne, with great difficulty, succeeded in building 
a rude stone wall to shelter them from the gale. So 
far as his niece was concerned, however, his efforts 
proved vain to save her, for about ten o'clock he 
found her dead, the principal cause of her death 
being some organic disease of the heart. Her com- 
panions passed the night in safety, discovering at 
daybreak the melancholy fact of their nearness to 
the Summit. Miss Bourne, who was but twenty- 
three years old,^ was buried in Hope Cemetery at 
Kennebunk, where was set up a large monument, 
which was intended, as its inscriptions testify, for 
the top of Mount Washington, but whose erection 
there was prevented by the temporary failure of the 
projected road. 

The year following the death of Miss Bourne was 
marked by the Mountain's claiming of another 
victim, and, as in the case of the young Englishman, 
the fatality was due to the traveler's attempting the 
ascent without companions. On August 7, 1856, 
Benjamin Chandler, an elderly man of Wilmington, 
Delaware, started up the path from the Glen late 
in the afternoon, but was caught in a storm and 

^ The former board monument on the mountain-side gave her age 
as twenty; her age is given correctly on the present three-sided 
wooden monument. 

271 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

wandered from the trail. Two men who arrived at 
the Tip-Top House that day, at dark or a Httle after, 
reported passing an old gentleman halfway up and 
remarked that he would hardly get up alone that 
night. After making some inquiries, a guide started 
out with a lantern, but when he had gone nearly 
a mile, his light was put out by the wind. He then 
returned, having got no answer to his shouts, and 
the proprietor of the hotel concluded that the old 
gentleman must have stopped for the night with 
the road workmen camping at the Ledge. Search 
was resumed the next morning, but, as it was in 
vain, it was thought that the traveler might have 
turned back and have left the Mountain. Late in 
September, however, his son, David Chandler, came 
in search of his father and offered a reward for his 
recovery, and thus informed the people of the Moun- 
tain region that he was still missing. 

For nearly a year Mr. Chandler's fate was un- 
known, although much time was spent in searching 
for his remains. Finally, in July of the next year 
after his disappearance, Ambrose Tower, of New 
York, came across a skeleton about half a mile east 
of the Summit. A gold watch, considerable money, 
a railroad ticket, and other articles were found with 
the skeleton, and there is no doubt of its being that 
of the unfortunate Benjamin Chandler, who was 
about seventy-five years old when he met his sad 
fate. In his memory the neighboring ridge has since 
been called Chandler Ridge. 

Eighteen years after the death of Mr. Chandler, 
Harry W. Hunter, twenty-two years old, a printer 

272 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, perished near the Craw- 
ford Bridle Path about half a mile from the summit 
of Mount Washington. Again the victim was a lone 
climber. On September 3, 1874, he left the Willey 
House in the early morning, after writing home that 
he was about to start to make the ascent. He did 
not appear at the Summit, and nothing was known 
of his fate until July 14, 1880, when three Amherst 
students who were climbing the Mountain saw what 
looked to be the body of a man partly hidden under 
an overhanging rock on the side of the cone. The 
object proved to be the remains of the unfortunate 
printer. Just how the young man met his death, of 
course, can never be known. The weather records 
for the day show that the weather was fair in its 
early part, but that a high wind was blowing at the 
time when he might have been on the portion of 
the trail northward from Mount Clinton, and that 
it rained from 3 to 9 p.m., at which latter time the 
temperature fell to 30°. Such conditions are suffi- 
cient to account for his fate. Very likely, exhausted 
by his exertions and chilled by the cold rain, he 
crawled into the crevice for such poor shelter as it 
afforded and there succumbed to heart failure. The 
place where his body was found is marked by a 
board monument, grim reminder of the peril of an 
unaccompanied trip over the Crawford Trail. 

A peculiar accident, and one which furnishes a 
warning against similar temptings of fate, was re- 
sponsible for another untimely and unnecessary 
death on the side of Mount Washington. On July 
24, 1886, Sewall E. Faunce, a Boston boy, fifteen 

273 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

years old, when climbing through Tuckerman's Ra- 
vine, rashly stepped under the snow arch, which fell 
and killed him. 

Eight years later, on July 2, there was a narrow 
escape from a similar fatality, which might have 
involved the loss of several or many lives. A party 
of fifty members of the Appalachian Mountain Club, 
which was holding a field meeting at the Summit, 
were making an excursion through Tuckerman's 
Ravine on that day. They had passed through 
the snow arch and had barely emerged, when one 
hundred feet of it fell, fortunately injuring none of 
them, although fragments of the snow struck several. 

In the cases of the five persons who had lost their 
lives on the Range up to the time of the casualty 
now to be related, the bodies had been immediately, 
or, in one instance, eventually, recovered. That of 
the sixth victim, however, has never been found, 
and the circumstances and manner of his perishing 
and the resting-place of his remains are solely mat- 
ters of conjecture. On Sunday, August 24, 1890, 
Ewald Weiss, a violinist of the Summit House 
orchestra, set out alone to visit the summit of Mount 
Adams. In fair weather the trail, as far as the base 
of the cone of that mountain, is not difficult to 
traverse or to follow ; nor is the distance great. How- 
ever, a severe storm came up and some time during 
it Weiss evidently met his death, as he was never 
seen afterward. That, bewildered by the storm, he 
wandered from the path and went or fell down into 
one of the ravines and there perished, or that one 
of the large jagged rocks with which the cone of 

274 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

Adams is largely covered rolled from its place and 
crushed him, concealing his body from view, ar-e 
two plausible guesses which have been made as to 
the mystery of his fate. In July, 1891, after two 
young men had reported finding, on the precipitous 
eastern face of the so-called Mount John Quincy 
Adams, a watch which was at first identified at the 
Summit House as that of Weiss, Professor J. Rayner 
Edmands and Charles E. Lowe, the well-known 
guide, started from the Ravine House to make a 
search for the remains or for traces of Weiss. At 
this time they found footprints which made them 
conclude that the violinist intended to reach Mount 
Madison, which discovery opened the whole of that 
peak as a hunting-ground for the unfortunate man's 
remains. Professor Edmands conjectured that 
Weiss may have fallen over an amphitheater of 
cliffs forming a branch of the Great Gulf.^ 

It was ten years after the mysterious death of the 
violinist Weiss before the death-toll of the Presi- 
dential Range received any further accessions. Then 
came the most unexpected and striking, so far, of 
the tragedies of climbing in the White Mountains, 
the double fatality which is constituted by the 
deaths of Curtis and Ormsbee on the Crawford 
Trail. Occurring at the time of year it did, it made 
a profound impression upon visitors to the Moun- 
tains in that season and in the following years, be- 
cause of the demonstration the casualty afforded of 
the possibility, even in summer, of peril from weather 

^ From a letter of Professor Edmands to The White Mountain 
Echo, published in the issue of that paper for August I, 1891. 

275 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

so violent as to be too much for even the most 
athletic and hardy to cope with successfully. 

William B. Curtis/ of New York, a noted Ameri- 
can amateur athlete, known to many friends as 
"Father Bill" Curtis, started, in company with 
Allan Ormsbee, of Brooklyn, also famous for his 
athletic prowess, to go up the Crawford Path on 
Saturday afternoon, June 30, 1900. It was their 
intention to join the members of the Appalachian 
Mountain Club, who had gone up by train that day, 
at the Summit House, where the Club was about to 
hold a field meeting. A storm was threatening, but 
as Curtis knew the trail well, the thought of harm 
was not seriously entertained. During the ascent, 
however, one of the most furious storms ^ ever 
known in the summer season broke upon them. 
Rain and hail, which changed to sleet and snow, 
were accompanied by a gale of nearly one hundred 
miles an hour. 

^ Mr. Curtis, who was at the time of his death sixty-three years 
old, was the founder of the Fresh Air Club of New York and one of 
the founders of the New York Athletic Club. He took up mountain- 
climbing late in life and was accustomed to climb alone and in all 
sorts of weather, thinly clad. 

Mr. Ormsbee, who was in his twenty-ninth year, was a member 
of the Crescent Athletic Club of Brooklyn and of the Fresh Air Club. 

^ During this, "the storm of a century," which raged for sixty 
hours, more than forty panes of glass were broken in the Summit 
House. The temperature fell from 48° on Friday to 25° on Saturday 
morning, before the storm. Rev. Dr. Harry P. Nichols and his son, 
Donaldson, came up by the Montalban Ridge in this same storm 
and had a hard struggle to reach the Summit. They arrived at the 
open Boott Spur at 11 a.m. on Saturday, and by alternate rushings 
and crouchings they succeeded in crossing Bigelow's Lawn in two 
hours. On the cone the sleet was bitter and the rocks crusted with 
ice. Every one hundred steps required a pause behind some shelter- 
ing rock to recover breath and normal heart action. 

276 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

All day Sunday the Club members were confined 
absolutely in the hotel, their minds filled with anx- 
ious forebodings as to the fate of the two trampers, 
whom they were powerless to aid in any way. When 
the terrible storm at length ended on Monday, and 
fair weather permitted a search to be made for the 
two men, the body of Curtis was found about noon, 
by Louis F. Cutter, lying on the path about two 
miles down, in the vicinity of the Lakes of the 
Clouds. Ormsbee's body was found late in the after- 
noon, by Professor Herschel C. Parker, within five 
minutes' walk of the Signal Station, at a point off 
the path, which he had reached after climbing, by 
efforts almost superhuman, over the icy rocks. 

The two men were seen at 1.30 p.m. on the fatal 
Saturday, when they were on the south side of 
Mount Pleasant, by James C. Harvey, a workman 
from the Crawford House, who, with a companion, 
was engaged in cutting out growth on the path. 
He started after them and shouted, but did not 
succeed in overtaking or in stopping them. They 
signed the Appalachian Mountain Club roll in the 
cylinder on Mount Pleasant, giving the date and 
this note as to the weather: "Rain clouds and wind 
sixty miles — Cold." They were last seen alive by 
two Bartlett men, Charles Allen and Walter Parker, 
who had been employed by a camping party in the 
woods south of Mount Washington, and who, when 
on their way down, met Curtis and Ormsbee north 
of Mount Pleasant. Neither of the climbers made 
any reply to a warning to turn back. 

The probable course of events may be inferred to 
277 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

be this: Mr. Curtis doubtless fell on the ice-coated 
rocks, for he had received a blow on the head suf- 
ficient to render him senseless. Ormsbee, failing to 
restore him, hastened, after providing such tem- 
porary shelter as he could for his companion, toward 
the Summit, which he knew was the nearest point 
where aid could be secured. There, two miles away, 
were many sturdy mountaineers. 

If this hypothesis is correct, Curtis must have 
regained consciousness after Ormsbee had left him, 
and have endeavored to struggle on, for his body 
was found some distance beyond the place, under 
the lee of the larger of the Monroe summits, where 
evidence was found of an attempt to make a rude 
shelter. 

Or, to give another supposition, when resting at 
this temporary refuge and taking counsel as to what 
course to pursue, they may have decided that there 
was no hope of survival unless they kept in motion, 
and so may have continued on from there, Curtis's 
fall occurring not long afterward on the spot where 
his body lay, and Ormsbee having then pushed on 
to get assistance. Or, again, Curtis may have been 
a few steps behind his companion and have fallen 
without the latter's knowledge in the thick fog and 
perhaps darkness. 

However that may be, the pitiless storm and 
mountain were too much also for Ormsbee. Along 
the remaining portion of the trail he must often have 
fallen and so have severely injured himself, for his 
body was covered with cuts and bruises. Even 
after encountering such mishaps, although he must 

278 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

have realized that the struggle to save his own life 
and that of his friend was probably hopeless, the 
heroic man did not immediately give up. His lac- 
erated hands showed that he must have dragged 
himself for some distance over the jagged rocks be- 
fore death overtook him. 

The spot where Curtis's body was found is con- 
spicuously marked by a pile of stones surmounted 
with a wooden cross and by a bronze memorial 
tablet fastened to the adjacent rock, and bearing 
this inscription: "On this spot William B. Curtis 
perished in the great storm of June 30, 1900. Placed 
by Fresh Air Club of New York." Fifteen hundred 
and eighty feet farther up the trail the Appalachian 
Mountain Club built the next summer a wooden 
shelter ^ where trampers may take refuge from the 
storms which sometimes sweep over the exposed 
southern trail, with the idea of minimizing the dan- 
ger of such fatalities as have just been narrated. 

The place where the stout-hearted Ormsbee's 
body was found is also marked by a wooden cross 
and a bronze tablet provided by the Fresh Air Club. 

The latest fatality in the White Mountain region, 
which occurred in 1912, is in some respects the most 
singular of all. It is unlike all the other casualties 
in that the unfortunate man was not a pleasure- 
seeking tramper, in that he got off the dangerous 
upper mountain tract alive, and in that he was seen 
after he had reached the valley district by several 
persons, and yet was finally lost. 

John M. Keenan, eighteen years of age, of Charles- 

* Moved in 19 15 about half a mile farther north. 
279 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

town, Massachusetts, was a new member of a party 
of engineers, who for two summers had been survey- 
ing the right of way for a proposed scenic railway 
up Mount Washington. Keenan arrived at the sur- 
veyors' camp at the Base of the Mountain on Fri- 
day, September 13, and the next day began his work 
as rear flagman. His duties for the next few days 
kept him near the Base, but on Wednesday, the 
1 8th, he went to the Summit with a party of expe- 
rienced engineers. After reaching the Summit the 
surveyors descended the cone to a point below the 
Ormsbee monument and in the direction of the 
Lakes of the Clouds. The chief gave instructions 
and placed his men in various positions, Keenan 
being told, as a man unfamiliar with the ground, to 
remain at his station until he was signaled to come 
up to the Summit, or, if it clouded up, to stay there 
until they came for him. 

Although the sky was overcast and the wind on 
the top was blowing more than fifty miles an hour, 
the Mountain was free from clouds the early part 
of the forenoon. The surveyors had not been long 
separated, when a heavy cloud, in which objects 
could scarcely be seen ten feet away, enveloped the 
Mountain. Coming to the conclusion, after a little 
while, that conditions were not likely to improve, 
but rather appeared to be getting worse, the chief 
decided to go back to get Keenan and to go then 
up to the Tip-Top House. On reaching the position 
where Keenan had been stationed, they found that, 
contrary to orders, he had left. This was at 10 A.M. 
The party searched in that vicinity until noon with-^ 

280 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

out success, and then went to the Summit, whither 
it was thought the lost man might have gone. 
Finding that he was not there, and learning on 
telephoning to the Base that he had not arrived at 
that point by the afternoon train, as was thought 
possible, the alarmed men took up the search again 
and continued it, but in vain, until nearly dark, 
when they had to desist on peril of losing their own 
lives. 

When the surveyors arrived at the Base that 
night and told the story of Keenan's disappearance, 
word was at once sent to the various Mountain 
centers to be on the lookout for the missing man. 
The bell on the Summit was kept ringing all night, 
while at the Base the steam whistle was blown at 
intervals. 

Thursday a large party, composed of the survey- 
ors and others, made a fruitless search of the entire 
cone of Mount Washington in dense clouds. The 
search was continued Friday under dangerous 
weather conditions, as the clouds had not lifted 
and the fall in temperature had caused the rocks to 
become coated with ice. That night word was re- 
ceived from the Honorable George H. Turner, of 
Bethlehem, who with Dr. Gile, of Hanover, had 
been out making a tour of inspection of State roads 
on that day, that between 11.30 a.m. and 12 M. 
they had passed a man who answered the descrip- 
tion of Keenan, at a point on the Pinkham Notch 
Road about two miles below the Glen House. The 
man was standing beside the road and appeared 
almost demented. As the automobile passed, he 

281 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

waved his arms and pointed toward Mount Wash- 
ington, but did not speak. Unfortunately, Mr. 
Turner did not know until he reached Fabyan that 
a man had been lost. 

This information made it evident that Keenan 
had succeeded in getting off the Mountain. How 
he accomplished this will never be known. He 
naturally at the outset traveled with the wind, 
which course would take him into Tuckerman's 
Ravine. Down the precipice he must have managed 
to slip, slide, crawl, and fall, evidently arriving at 
the Pinkham Notch Road in sound physical condi- 
tion, a remarkable outcome under the circumstances. 

The searching party, which was spending the night 
on the Summit, was communicated with, and told 
to go at daybreak to the Glen House and start a 
search from there. Several experienced guides had 
in the mean time been hired by the railway company 
and they also were ordered to the Glen. When the 
party arrived at its new field of search. Fire Warden 
Briggs was found at his camp and inquiry was made 
of him as to whether he had seen anything of the 
lost young man. It was then learned that the fire 
warden had met a man answering Keenan's descrip- 
tion on Friday morning, when coming down a lonely 
log road near the point where Mr. Turner passed 
him. From what the stranger said there is no doubt 
that he was Keenan. His mental condition was evi- 
dent from his rambling and somewhat unintelligible 
talk, in the course of which he said he was looking 
for the Keenan farm. Briggs at the time had not 
.learned of any one having been lost. Knowing that 

282 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

there was no such farm in that region, he did not 
credit this and some others of the man's statements. 

After being brought down to the State road and 
being shown the way to the Glen House, Keenan 
bade Briggs good-bye and started about ii a.m. in 
that direction. Briggs then went to his camp, and, 
being accustomed to meet strange-looking persons 
in that locaHty during the summer, he gave no 
further thought to the man he had seen until the 
searching party visited his camp. 

During the disagreeable weather which continued 
through Saturday, the searchers covered carefully 
the ground between the Darby Field and the Glen 
House, but without avail. Sunday the 22d, the first 
clear day after Keenan was lost, they were joined 
by fully one hundred voluntary searchers from Gor- 
ham and other places in the Mountains, and, al- 
though every foot of ground on both sides of the 
road for more than a mile was gone over and other 
ground was covered and Milliken's Pond drained, 
no trace of Keenan was found. His father, Lawrence 
J. Keenan, came on from Boston and was with the 
searchers all day Sunday, returning to his home 
that night satisfied that a thorough search had been 
made and that there was no chance of finding his 
boy alive. Search was discontinued on Monday, 
except by the experienced guides and a few of the 
surveyors, who went again over the territory. 

In the mean time it was rumored that a man by 
the name of Lightfoot, who was following Mr. 
Turner in an automobile, had picked up a man 
thought to be Keenan. This story, which was at 

283 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

first contradicted and thought to be false, turned out 
to be true, and, when its details became known, it 
threw a new Hght on the mystery. Lightfoot, a 
chauffeur of Bethlehem, was carrying the highway 
officials' baggage in his own car behind them. About 
noon, and about half a mile beyond the Glen House 
toward Jackson, he was stopped by a young man 
who asked him for a ride and got into the vehicle. 
Although Lightfoot knew that a surveyor had been 
lost on the Mountain, he did not until later, after 
seeing Keenan's picture in a Boston paper, connect 
the coatless and evidently demented passenger with 
the missing man. 

The chauffeur carried Keenan about two miles, 
and at his request let him out at the deserted lumber 
camps near the Darby Field, not looking, in the hard 
rain, to see just where he went after getting out. 
When this story was told a few days later, another 
searching party was organized and the territory 
where the poor fellow was last seen was covered, 
but without success. The most likely supposition 
as to what became of him is that he wandered in his 
dazed, helpless way up some of the old log roads 
and through the thick woods toward Mount Wash- 
ington, until, exhausted from hunger and exertion, 
he sank down.^ 

The record of having endured probably the most 
terrible of experiences, and certainly the most pro- 
longed of all encounters, with the fury of the Moun- 

^ I am indebted for my account of this casualty to Reginald H. 
Buckler's very full and comprehensive account published in the issues 
of Among the Clouds for July 15, 16, and 17, 1913. *" 

■ 284 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

tain weather in the history of White Mountain 
climbing, and of having, in spite of unexampled 
hardship and great agony, survived to tell the tale, 
belongs to Dr. B. L. Ball, a Boston physician. His 
almost miraculous escape from death under the con- 
ditions he met with was due in part to his medical 
training, which made him know the fatal conse- 
quences of permitting himself to go to sleep, and in 
part to the fortunate chance, as it turned out, that 
it was raining when he began his ascent and also 
when he continued it on the second day from the 
Camp House, which circumstance caused him to 
take his umbrella. 

Dr. Ball had been an extensive traveler, having 
visited only a short time before this adventure the 
Philippine Islands and Java, where he had success- 
fully achieved on the third trial the difficult ascent 
of the cone of the Marapee. He had crossed the 
Bernese Alps, wading much of the way in deep snow, 
and had, against the protestations of guides, per- 
sisted in climbing a snowy peak near the Bains de 
Leuk, also in Switzerland. So he was an experienced 
mountaineer, thus well prepared for coping with 
any conditions he was likely to meet with in climb- 
ing Mount Washington. 

Dr. Ball had intended to make his excursion to 
the White Mountains as early as midsummer of 
1854, when he had just returned from Europe, as 
he " was desirous of comparing some of the finest 
American scenery" with that he had just seen 
abroad. But his engagements prevented, and the 
summer of 1855 was also occupied, much of the 

285 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

time with the preparation and publication of his 
" Rambles in Eastern Asia," so that it was the mid- 
dle of October before he was free to carry out his 
design. 

• He had regarded October as too late, thinking 
that the autumnal scenery must have lost much of 
its attractiveness and that the weather would be 
too cool on the Mountains, but friends had told 
him that he would probably be repaid for the jour- 
ney even as late as the first of November. Added 
to this encouragement was the inducement that 
two former traveling companions in the Philippine 
Islands had started about the middle of October to 
visit the White Mountains and Niagara Falls to 
take sketches and would be at the Mountains at 
the end of a week, where he had partly arranged 
to meet them. While he was awaiting a prospect of 
pleasant weather, the 23d of October arrived, prom- 
ising to be the beginning of a period of such weather. 
The previous evening in making a call at a friend's 
house, he met and conversed with the Reverend 
T. Starr King, whose description of the grandeur 
and beauty of the scenery, and expression of a wish 
to view the Mountains in autumn and in winter, 
gave him an additional motive for visiting them at 
this season. 

Dr. Ball then resolved to go, his intention being 
to make an expeditious trip and to return on the 
third day. The engagements of his friend, Dr. A. B. 
Hall, who had expressed a desire to accompany him, 
preventing that gentleman's leaving for two or three 
days. Dr. Ball determined to go alone. When at 

286 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

length his mind was made up to attempt the excur- 
sion, he, by making haste, reached the railroad sta- 
tion just in time for the train for Portland. Arriving 
at that city a little after dark, he was disappointed 
to find that there was no train for Gorham that 
night. When he arose the next morning, a greater 
disappointment was his, for it was raining hard and 
bid fair to continue stormy. Had he obeyed his 
first impulse, he would have returned to Boston, but 
the second thought that it might possibly clear in 
a few hours, and that if he should get but a glimpse 
of the Mountains he would return better satisfied 
with his trip, made him resolve to proceed to Gor- 
ham, where he arrived about ii a.m. Inquiring of 
the train conductor as to the location of the Moun- 
tains, and being told that he would not be able to 
see them in such weather short of the Glen House, 
he decided to go thither. So engaging a horse, he 
set off on horseback, with his valise in front of him 
and his umbrella up to protect him from the rain. 
On arriving at the hotel he found a dense fog pre- 
vailing. It had been his intention to stop there but 
a half-hour and then to return, but, after inquiring 
for his two friends who, he was informed, had not 
been there, he engaged in conversation with the land- 
lord, Mr. Thompson. The latter in the course of 
their conversation told him of the carriage road then 
under construction, of the Camp House and Ledge, 
four miles up, and of the bridle path to the Summit. 
This information caused Dr. Ball to change his 
mind about his length of stay and to form the pur- 
pose of walking up the road a distance, perhaps as 

287 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

far as the Camp House, which design, in spite of 
Mr. Thompson's discouraging declaration that there 
would be nothing to see and his warning against at- 
tempting to go to the Summit, he immediately put 
into execution. Although it was raining hard, he 
felt stimulated by the cool, invigorating air and so 
continued his walk, to find himself in less than two 
hours at the end of the road and at the foot of the 
Ledge. Here a less determined man would have 
been satisfied to stop, particularly under the weather 
conditions then prevailing, but the doctor concluded 
he would go to the top of the Ledge, and accordingly, 
he clambered up there, "without much difficulty." 
Perceiving higher land beyond, he started for it, but 
progress became very slow and fatiguing, with a 
chilling wind blowing, the rain freezing upon him, 
and his feet breaking through the crust of snow at 
every step. So after about an hour's traveling, he 
turned to retrace his steps. In the gathering dark- 
ness, he ran down and managed after much diffi- 
culty eventually to reach the Camp House, where, 
arriving encased in ice and thoroughly chilled, he 
was hospitably received by its occupants, J. D. 
Myers and two others, everything in the way of 
restorative measures that kindness and experience 
could suggest being done for the unexpected guest. 
Accepting an invitation to remain until the next 
day, he passed a comfortable, but sleepless, night. 
Little did he think, when he awakened in the 
morning, of what was before him, of the terrible 
experiences his persistency was to bring upon him 
that day and the two following, and of the suffering 

288 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

and even agony he was to be subjected to for weeks 
and months afterward. When he walked out to view 
the prospect, the weather had softened, and al- 
though clouds hung over the Mountain, there was 
little rain, and they seemed likely to break away. 
The bridle path was pointed out to him, and, as it 
was then free from snow, he formed the project of 
making a short trip over the Ledge and perhaps of 
going on to the Summit, persuading himself to this 
course chiefly by reflecting that he was already half- 
way up and that a convenient opportunity might 
not present itself another season. 

Despite the warnings conveyed in the not alto- 
gether encouraging remark of Mr. Myers as to the 
inadvisability of attempting such a trip at such a 
time and in his recital of the circumstances of the 
then recent death of Miss Bourne, Dr. Ball deter- 
mined to go, and so, after an almost untasted break- 
fast, started out, shod with his host's "much too 
large," but stout, thick boots, provided with a cane 
presented to him by the same kind-hearted man, 
and protected from the sprinkle by the providential 
umbrella. 

At first he made good progress, and with little 
fatigue he reached the top of the Ledge, where, how- 
ever, the view was, owing to the fog, of but very 
limited extent, only the Camp House and its im- 
mediate surroundings being visible. Soon, as he 
went on, the path became no longer discernible, 
losing itself so gradually that its termination could 
not be detected. Pressing on, following the rise of 
land and passing what he calls the "first mountain," 

289 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the way became more difficult and fatiguing, his 
feet breaking through the crust and being often 
difficult to extricate. His natural determination and 
the lure of an occasional breaking-away of the clouds 
made him continue on, when the greater consump- 
tion of time than anticipated and the increasing 
difficulty counseled abandoning the project. "Be- 
tween the second and third mountains," the air 
grew disagreeably cold, the rain changed to sleet 
and soon to fast-falling snow, and the wind increased. 
Pressing forward, he at length, after many wander- 
ings from his course, reached "the summit of the 
third mountain." There he was at a loss what direc- 
tion to take, but, believing that he was three-fourths 
of the way up, and having been told that he would 
find provisions, materials for fire, and clothes and 
bedding for the night at one of the two houses on 
the Summit, on he resolved to go. 

In spite of the piercing cold and the violent wind, 
which made the storm difficult to face, and the 
clouds of snow, which rendered it impossible to see 
more than a very short distance, this man of indom- 
itable will and amazing hopefulness, lured by the 
thought that he was within half or three-quarters 
of a mile of comfortable shelter and the possibility 
that the storm might in a short time be over, went 
on with renewed energy. He walked as fast as his 
partly benumbed legs would permit, buffeting the 
cold storm. Many times the wind threw him to the 
ground, but, although his face became covered with 
ice, a row of icicles two inches long depended from 
his cap, and his eyelashes were filled with icy globules, 

290 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

and although he began to think the condition of 
affairs had become somewhat desperate, he resolved, 
believing that he was on the "fourth mountain," 
to try for the Summit House. 

After an hour's painful exertion against a storm 
which, instead of abating, appeared to increase, and 
in which he could advance only by plunging forward 
by aid of his cane in the intervals of the gusts, he 
arrived upon a piece of comparatively level ground, 
which he took to be the summit of Mount Washing- 
ton. His self-congratulation upon his supposed suc- 
cess was damped by the condition that now con- 
fronted him, for, if the storm had seemed violent 
elsewhere, in this exposed place it had a fury that 
was indescribable. "If ten hurricanes had been in 
deadly strife with each other, it could have been 
no worse," he says. His freezing hands and be- 
numbed limbs and the increasing laboriousness of 
respiration admonished him that he must find the 
Summit House if he would live. So he groped on 
with the greatest difficulty in the whirling snow, 
seeking the desired shelter, blown along or pros- 
trated by turns by the powerful wind, and aware 
that he was becoming frozen. 

Twice he went in the direction of darker shades 
which he thought might be the hotel, only to find 
on reaching the objects that they were piles of 
rocks, in one case evidently a landmark or a monu- 
ment. Unwilling to give up, although coming to 
think that the mountain he was on might not be 
the Summit, he persevered for a while longer in his 
search, but in vain. Seating himself in the slight 

291 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

shelter of a rock, to consider the best course to 
pursue, he remained there until he became aware 
that he was as if riveted to the ground and that a 
delightful drowsiness was stealing over him. Know- 
ing that he must rouse himself, he raised himself with 
considerable effort, and, reluctant even then to 
abandon his project, made one more trial, which 
ended as had his other exertions. This time he 
found that the land descended in every direction 
and, knowing that he could not hold out much 
longer, he finally decided to make his way back. 
It was then, as he judged, about the middle of the 
afternoon, so delay was dangerous and some degree 
of haste was demanded. 

At first, in retracing his course he tried to find 
his footprints in order to follow them back, but they 
were irregular and at times partly obliterated or 
lost altogether, so that much time was consumed 
in searching for them. Finding his strength rapidly 
failing from the cold, he believed it more prudent 
to abandon search entirely, and, guided only by the 
fall of the land, to undertake the descent. The furi- 
ous wind enveloped him in snow, he was compelled to 
gasp and hold on to the rocks for minutes at a time, 
and frequently a sudden gust threw him down, 
causing him to receive many bruises from the 
hidden stones. 

Before he had proceeded far, he came upon a 
stake standing a few inches above the snow. Ad- 
vancing he saw others and noticed that they were 
at regular distances. They were surveyors' marks 
for the contemplated road to the Summit ; and when 

292 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

the doctor realized what they were, he at first 
had the thought of trying to follow them up to the 
goal of his desire, but various considerations, such 
as the possibility of their not extending all the 
way, his condition, and the lateness of the day, de- 
cided him to go downward only. So on he went as 
best he could, and at length a patch of thick, 
stunted brushwood appeared before him, indicating 
that he had reached the line of vegetation. Here he 
soon could discover no more stakes, and to his con- 
sternation observed that night was fast coming on.. 
Being in doubt what course to pursue and knowing 
nothing as to where he was, he continued downward 
for some little time against many obstacles, until the 
gathering darkness made it evident that he should 
have to pass the night out on the Mountain. Per- 
ceiving that he was fast freezing and knowing 
that his own exertions were all he had to depend 
upon, he looked around for shelter, but in vain. 
Finally, stopping on a flat rock, and casting his eyes 
about, he saw a small recess between it and a low 
patch of firs. Then he found a use for the umbrella, 
for opening it over him, and below the firs, he util- 
ized it as a shelter, fortunately finding a strong root 
at hand in the snow, to which he managed, with 
great difficulty on account of the numbness of his 
hands, to fasten the handle by means of a small cord. 
After a short rest, he set to work, with all his re- 
maining strength, pulling up the tough bushes by the 
roots and piling them upon the umbrella to protect 
it from the wind. The sides of his camp he made 
tight with crusts of snow and tops of fir trees. At- 

293 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

tempts to build a fire were unsuccessful because of 
the dampness of the wood and the force of the storm. 
In this frail shelter the doctor passed the night — 
the longest of his life, he pronounces it. Knowing 
too well the fatal consequence of indulging in even 
a few minutes' sleep, and feeling that, with his stifT 
and frozen feet and the freezing chill of his body, 
he might be soon overpowered, Dr. Ball exerted 
himself to his utmost to keep awake. By taking con- 
strained positions, now leaning on one elbow, then 
on the other, now changing from side to side, now 
taking a forward position, then a backward one, 
now extending at full length and now drawn up, he 
succeeded in preventing sleep. During the whole 
night the storm swept down the mountain-side, with 
such violence that he feared many times it would 
carry away the umbrella and leave him exposed to 
certain death. ■ 

But no such disaster happened, and at length 
morning — it was Friday, October 26 — dawned. 
The snow had ceased falling, but the keen wind still 
blew hard and clouds obscured the sun and shut 
out all the view below him, while above the air was 
clear. It seemed to him, so numb was he, that he 
had become a part of the Mountain itself, but 
arousing himself and exercising to restore warmth 
and animation to his feet, he contrived with the aid 
of his cane to ascend to the line where vegetation 
ceases, to reconnoiter. But nothing to guide him 
could be seen, clouds being above him and below. 
Searching diligently for the stakes, he was unable 
to find them beyond this place, and so was disap- 

294 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

pointed of any guidance they might furnish him. 
It was difficult to determine on what course of action 
to pursue. He had no wish to go toward the sup- 
posed Mount Washington, — the mountain, he 
learned afterward, was Mount Jefferson, — which 
was on the right. Reasoning that if he made a cir- 
cuit of the Mountain he should somewhere cross his 
track of ascent, which he might follow down, he 
started off toward the left. The ground was covered 
with snow to the depth of eight or ten inches, and he 
could travel but slowly on account of his weakness 
and various difficulties in the way. At nearly every 
step his feet broke through the crust, and he several 
times had to make considerable detours to avoid 
obstacles. Vainly he tried to quench his burning 
thirst with ice, which he broke from the rocks. 

He traveled for about two hours toward a place 
which showed some appearance of a path, and 
about noon, as he judged, he arrived near it, but 
to his disappointment, he could discover nothing 
that looked like an outlet. 

Discouraging as it was, there was no other course 
but to retrace his steps. It had taken him four hours 
to reach where he now was, and, knowing that it 
would take at least as much time to return, he 
walked along as fast as the nature of the way and 
the clumsiness of his frozen feet would permit. As 
he approached the place of the previous night's 
shelter, the clouds cleared away so that he could 
see below, but nothing was visible but forests and 
another range of mountains beyond them. Hearing 
a clinking noise he looked around and saw upon the 

295 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

top of the bluff two men, apparently standing to- 
gether. Thinking now that help was at hand, he 
hallooed repeatedly. But his voice died away on the 
wind, and, discerning no movement in them, he at 
last concluded that they might be rocks with shapes 
like men, and, although he did not give up trying 
to attract their attention, he continued on. It was 
impossible for him to reach them. The men — for 
men they were and not rocks — were two guides 
who had been sent out to look for Dr. Ball by Land- 
lord Thompson, of the Glen House. They found 
the doctor's tracks and followed them to within half 
a mile of his place of shelter, but night coming on, 
they despaired of finding him and returned home. 
Probably on account of the high wind no sound of 
his voice reached them. 

Arriving near the place where he had spent the 
painful previous night, Dr. Ball observed that the 
sun was sinking, and, as the clouds gathered around 
closer and thicker and the cold was intense and 
piercing, and as, moreover, in his weakened condi- 
tion he could do nothing in the way of searching 
for an outlet farther on to the right, he was soon 
forced to the melancholy conclusion that he must 
pass another night on the Mountain. Failing, after 
about half an hour's search, to find a more com- 
fortable place in which to stay, he, with some diffi- 
culty in the storm and darkness, made his way to 
the sheltering rock and fastened his umbrella in the 
same place as before, endeavoring, but with not 
much success, to close it in more securely than it 
had been the night before. 

296 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

The second night passed much like the first. It 
stormed and snowed all night, the snow drifted in 
a good deal, and the wind came in violent gusts, 
threatening to destroy at times his only shelter. His 
sufferings from thirst were almost intolerable, his 
throat and stomach feeling as if they were scorched. 
The crusts of frozen snow alleviated his distress 
only while he was swallowing them. His respiration 
became short, his lungs apparently becoming in- 
capable of inflating to more than about half their 
natural capacity, he continually experienced a se- 
vere pain in his left side, his pulse was accelerated, 
but much reduced in force, labored, and very inter- 
mittent, and his entire muscular system was affected 
with uncontrollable shaking. Sleep was warded off 
by keeping the mind active by a multiplicity of 
thoughts and by taking constrained positions as 
on the night before. He would have given way, he 
feared, had he made the effort only to keep awake, 
with no other exercise of the mind than thinking of 
the cold. 

The long night was over at last and the breaking 
of dawn gladdened the heart of the sufferer. On 
looking off, after a while, he saw through the dry 
brush a building several miles away in the valley 
below on the other side of a large forest. He was 
somewhat perplexed as to the identity of the house, 
although he knew of no other house very near the 
Mountain, his confusion being due to his mistaking 
Mount Jefferson for Mount Washington, which 
latter is not visible from the place where he was. 

When he realized that the building was not a 
297 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

product of his imagination, he crawled forth to the 
front of the rock to reconnoiter, supporting himself 
on it and stamping his feet to restore animation to 
them. After about two hours he was able to walk, 
and then with painful steps he ascended to the tract 
above the brush to get a clear view to aid him in 
determining the course to be pursued. Deeming it 
unwise to take a straight line down the Mountain 
and through the forests to the Glen House, because 
of the obstacles and the chances of losing his way, 
he decided that he ought to encircle the Mountain 
in the opposite direction from that of the previous 
day, and, accordingly, he started off in that direc- 
tion, hobbling along in his enfeebled condition, his 
mind supported by the hope that each step was 
bringing him nearer the outlet. 

Toward the middle of the day he halted upon an 
elevated flat rock to look about and lay out a course 
as free as possible from impediments. Before, how- 
ever, he could adopt his plan of taking a range, if 
possible, a hundred feet higher up the Mountain, as 
he was about to move on, to his "joy and astonish- 
ment," he saw a party of men just coming into view 
around the angle of the bluff. They appeared to 
be looking for some object in the snow. Without 
any thought that they were searching for him, Dr. 
Ball shouted to them, whereupon they all stopped 
short and looked at him with manifest amaze- 
ment. Soon Mr. Hall, one of the proprietors of the 
Summit House and the leader, recovering somewhat 
from his surprise, came forward and then stopped 
and put several questions to the doctor. From his 

298 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

manner of asking them and receiving the answers 
was made evident his wonder, for it seemed as if he 
could not bring himself to beUeve that the answerer 
was actually the man who had left the Glen House 
Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Hall's companions, all 
experienced guides, gathered around and looked at 
Dr. Ball, too astonished to speak. The party had 
followed his tracks, but, losing them in the brush, 
they were endeavoring to rediscover them by ex- 
tending their line, when they heard his shout. 

So parched and dry was Dr. Ball's mouth and 
throat that he could not swallow food. Unfortu- 
nately, his rescuers had provided nothing to drink, 
so he was unable to obtain any relief from his 
thirst until they had gone some distance on their 
return, when two swallows of water were obtained 
from a rock which had a small hollow at the top. 
Now that the doctor had not to rely upon himself, 
his strength was less and he could not walk so firmly 
as before. Throwing his arms around the necks of 
two of the party, he walked on, with this assistance, 
between them. After a while they came to the 
regular path and then they descended the Ledge to 
the Camp House, where Mr. Myers welcomed the 
doctor as one from the dead. The distance to the 
place where he was found was about a mile and a 
half and from his encampment about two miles. 
On Dr. Ball's remarking that he believed he would 
have reached the Camp House alone, as he was at 
last on the right course, Mr. Hall expressed a differ- 
ent opinion and called his attention to the clouds 
which had gathered and had shut in the view. 

299 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Here the doctor's feet were examined and, being 
found still frozen, were plunged into cold water 
from melted snow and ice to remove the frost. 
After being somewhat rested, he was placed upon a 
horse, which, for many years accustomed to the 
Mountains, carried him very steadily, guardedly 
stepping around or over stones, stumps, and other 
obstacles, for a mile and a half over the new road. 
When they came to the finished part of the road, 
Mr. Thompson, who had arranged with the party 
to be informed, by means of signal flags, when Dr. 
Ball's body should be found, and who had watched 
the men with a telescope as they advanced over the 
Mountain and returned, met them with his horses 
and carriage. Welcoming the doctor "back alive," 
Mr. Thompson observed, "You have been through 
what no other person has, or probably will again, 
in a thousand years." 

The sufferer, having been transferred to the car- 
riage and covered with blankets, which protected 
him from the cold and the rain, arrived at the Glen 
House about five o'clock in the afternoon, progress 
being necessarily slow because of his sensitive body. 
Welcome, indeed, to him was the substantial hotel, 
and even more grateful, if possible, to him were the 
sympathetic faces and solicitous words of the in- 
mates. 

Here, under the kind ministrations of the women 
of the household, he was made as comfortable as he 
could be. A physician from Gorham was in attend- 
ance on the patient, and the latter's brother. Dr. S. 
Ball, of Boston, came to look after him. For a few 

300 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

days his sufferings were comparatively light. There 
was general prostration of his system, with some 
fever, an Insatiable thirst, and frequent violent 
tremblings of the body, due to chills. His feet and 
hands were as if dead and were discolored to black- 
ness, distorted by swelling, and covered with water- 
blisters. Above the injuries the pain was severe, 
and at times, when cramp set in, excruciating. 

After having remained about a week at the Glen 
House, the doctor was sufificiently recovered to be 
driven to Gorham, riding very comfortably on a sofa 
placed in a carriage, whence the train was taken to 
Boston. There, under the care and treatment of 
his brother. Dr. S. Ball, and Dr. H. Barnes, after 
remaining for twelve weeks in a very helpless condi- 
tion, his general health was quite restored, and his 
injured members were by the 1st of March, 1856, 
again usable to a moderate degree. 

Such is the record of this remarkable case of sixty 
hours' exposure on the Mountains.^ Mr. Hall truly 
remarked in a letter to the doctor's brother, "There 
is nothing in the history of the White Mountains to 
compare with this case of your brother ; and I am very 
sure its parallel will not be known in time to come." 

By a curious irony of fate, this man, who survived 
the cold snowstorm and freezing wind of the White 
Mountains and endured such bitter sufferings from 
frost, died, four years later, at the age of thirty-nine, 
in Chiriqui, Panama. 

To a chapter dealing with casualties may perhaps 

^ My account of Dr. Ball's experience is drawn from his own book, 
Three Days on the White Mountains, published in 1856. 

301 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

appropriately be added a brief record of some note- 
worthy convulsions of Nature, which altered, for a 
time at least, the appearance of the Mountain land- 
scape, and which in one case since the famous dis- 
aster of 1826 resulted in the loss of human life. 
Landslides of greater or less magnitude have always 
been frequent occurrences in the White Mountains. 
Torrential rains acting upon the loose thin soil of 
the upper portions of the slopes, or upon the sur- 
faces of high areas denuded of trees by fire, are usu- 
ally responsible for these natural phenomena. In 
the prehistoric days they were, as has been noted, 
one of the causes of the Indians' dread of the loftier 
summits, the aborigines attributing the noise which 
attended the slides to the supposed superior beings 
with which their superstition peopled the higher re- 
gions. In historical times several slides have occurred 
which are memorable for their extent or for the dam- 
age they have done. The most noted of all is, of 
course, the Willey Slide of 1826, which has been re- 
corded in an earlier chapter. 

In the autumn of 1869, exceptionally heavy rains 
were experienced in the White Mountain region and 
in consequence a number of disastrous avalanches 
occurred. On October 4, there was a landslide on 
Carter Dome, by which the mountain was stripped 
to its bed ledges for a distance of nearly a mile on 
its north and west sides. An indirect result of the 
storm which caused this slide was the death of 
Mr. Thompson, proprietor of the Glen House, who, 
as has been told elsewhere, when attempting to 
avert the destruction of his mill was swept away by 

302 



CASUALTIES ON PRESIDENTIAL RANGE 

the torrent of water and debris which rushed down 
the narrow glen of the Peabody River. 

At this time a slide of immense magnitude dev- 
astated a vast area on Tripyramid, that mysterious 
triple-crowned mountain in the Waterville region. 
The denuded area has a length of two and a half 
miles and varies in width from thirty feet at the 
upper extremity, which is but two hundred feet 
below the top of the peak, to more than a thousand 
feet at the lower end, where the accumulated debris 
spreads over the meadows. 

Again, in 1885, Tripyramid was the scene of 
slides greater than that of 1869. They occurred 
about the middle of August after several hard rains. 
In both cases, owing to the wilderness nature of the 
region, the slides were attended with no loss of life 
or property. 

A striking freak of Nature, which formerly added 
to the interest of that great scenic feature at the 
southern entrance of the Franconia Notch, the 
famous Flume, was the suspension of a huge boulder 
between the walls of the narrowing upper part of 
the canyon. There it was held, doubtless for cen- 
turies, tightly gripped by the opposing cliffs, mid- 
way between the rim and the floor of the chasm, 
and under it thousands of visitors passed with no 
thought of the possibility of its ever being dislodged. 
The enormous rock was, however, swept away on 
June 20, 1883, when an avalanche, caused by heavy 
rains on the peaks above, crashed down through the 
Flume. As compensation for the carrying away of 
the boulder, the landslide lengthened and deepened 

303 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the gorge and added to its attractions two new 
waterfalls, one of them the very beautiful cascade 
at its head. 

On July 10, 1885, the great slide took place on 
Cherry Mountain, descending the Owl's Head peak 
on the north side. Its ddbris — broken trees, mud, 
rocks, and earth — was carried to the foot of the 
mountain, making a two-mile track of devastation, 
and was mostly deposited on the farm of Oscar 
Stanley, where it wrecked the house, killed several 
cattle, and mortally injured Donald Walker, one of 
the farmhands. For years the vast scar of this slide, 
known as the "Stanley Slide," was plainly visible 
from Jefferson, but of late years it has become over- 
grown again and so is now much less conspicuous. 



XIV 

WINTER ASCENTS OF MOUNT WASHINGTON — THE 
WINTER OCCUPATION OF MOUNT MOOSILAUKE 
AND OF MOUNT WASHINGTON — THE U.S. SIG- 
NAL SERVICE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 

The winter ascent of Mount Washington, a feat 
now, in these mountaineering days, rather fre- 
quently accomplished by hardy members of the 
Appalachian Mountain Club, by sturdy collegians 
of the Dartmouth Outing Club, and by a few others, 
is an excursion of considerable difficulty and not a 
little danger. It often gives opportunity for some 
real Alpine mountaineering,^ and thus offers the 
nearest approach in the Eastern United States to 
such mountain-climbing as is undertaken in the 
summer in the playground of Europe and in the 
Canadian Rockies. 

The first ascent in winter was not made for pleas- 
ure, as are all of the ascents of the present time and 
as were many of those achieved in the past, but in 
the performance of a duty. Lucius Hartshorn, of 
Lancaster, son-in-law of Samuel F. Spaulding, one 
of the proprietors of the Tip-Top House, was a 

1 That the climbing of "the crown of New England" in winter is 
regarded as in the same category with and as comparable with the 
most strenuous mountaineering exploits, is borne witness to by the 
fact of the inclusion of an article on " Mount Washington in Winter," 
by Edward L. Wilson, in the volume on Mountain Climbing in "The 
Out-of-Door Library," in which volume the companion articles have 
to do with the Alps, and Mounts ^tna, Ararat, and St. Elicis. 

305 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

deputy sheriff of Coos County, and as such was 
employed by his father-in-law, in the winter of 1858, 
to go up the Mountain and make an attachment of 
property at the Summit, in connection with liti- 
gation as to the title. The noted guide, Benjamin 
F. Osgood, of the Glen House, who died in Decem- 
ber, 1907, at the age of seventy-eight, was Mr. 
Hartshorn's companion in this first scaling of Mount 
Washington in winter, which was done on the 7th 
of December in the first-named year. Their course 
was up the carriage road to the Halfway House and 
thence over the crust to the top. Mr. Osgood, who 
had piloted many distinguished men through the 
Mountains in the old Concord coaches or on horse- 
back over the Mountain trails, and who had a large 
fund of reminiscences of the early days, used often 
to tell of his thrilling experience on this historic 
occasion. 

Some of the details of their stay on the Summit 
and of the descent are given in a contemporary issue 
of the Cods Republican. On arriving, they immedi- 
ately took measures to enter one of the houses, 
which, as these were covered with snow, was a work 
requiring time. Unable to force an entrance at the 
doors, they finally got in through a window, on 
which the frost was a foot and a half in thickness. 
The interior of the hotel was like a tomb, the walls 
and all the furniture being draped with some four 
inches of frost, while the air was extremely biting, 
and the darkness was such that a lamp was neces- 
sary to enable them to distinguish objects. As de- 
lay was dangerous in the extreme, the two men, the 

306 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

legal duty having been performed, prepared to re- 
turn. Upon emerging, they saw to the southwest a 
cloud, which was coming on toward them with 
alarming swiftness and which rapidly increased in 
volume. Knowing that to be caught in this frost 
cloud would probably be fatal, they hurried on and 
just managed to reach the woods, at the base of the 
Ledge, when it enfolded them. So icy and penetrat- 
ing was it that to have encountered it on the unpro- 
tected part of the Mountain would have been to 
have perished in its enveloping pall. The intrepid 
pair reached the Glen in safety, where they received 
a hearty welcome from their anxious friends. 

Another noteworthy winter ascent was accom- 
plished on February lo-ii, 1862, by John H. 
Spaulding, Chapin C. Brooks, and Franklin White, 
a photographer, all of Lancaster, who spent two 
days and nights in the old Summit House. 

From a graphic account of the visit, written by 
Mr. Spaulding, we learn that they started from the 
Glen House at eight o'clock in the evening on the 
loth in bright moonlight with ample packs and pro- 
visions. Walking slowly up the carriage road on 
snowshoes in the still night, they arrived at the 
Ledge after midnight. In this first portion of the 
ascent, the glittering crust, the tree-shadows across 
their path, and the white, winding road and con- 
trasting evergreen thickets all combined to form a 
most beautiful scene, while at the place of rest a 
weird picture was presented to them, formed by the 
ruins of the great barn built the previous season, and 
by the fire-scathed trees, standing in bold relief in 

307 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the moonlight, with the glittering Ledge itself and 
the dark old shanty in the background. Kindling a 
fire at the shelter, they drowsed until daybreak on 
an old straw bed laid on a snowdrift. At sunrise they 
began the onward march, without snowshoes, ad- 
vancing by cutting steps in the ice. At five miles 
up, a wide ice-field was encountered, necessitating 
the cutting of deep steps, and at about six miles, a 
deep drift impeded their progress and prevented 
them from following the road. Here lunch was 
taken, and they found the thermometer to register 
in a rising wind 2']'^ above zero. Storm-clouds over 
toward Mount Carter warned them to hasten on, 
which they did as rapidly as circumstances would 
permit. As they approached the top, they were en- 
wrapped in a heavy black cloud, which froze upon 
them. On arriving at the Summit, the hardy climb- 
ers found the two houses covered with glittering ice 
and with curious frost feathers standing out on the 
northerly side. Walking up a drift, they broke away 
the ice from the south gable-end window of the 
Summit House, and, taking out the window, entered 
the attic. As soon as possible a stove was brought 
up from a lower room, some wood secured from the 
Tip-Top House, and a fire kindled. This done, the 
doughty trio, after further fortifying themselves by 
piling up a barricade of mattresses around the stove, 
passed a fairly comfortable night. But their stay 
had to be prolonged beyond its intended duration 
of a single night, for in the morning they found 
themselves in the midst of a fierce snowstorm, and 
on that account they were compelled to endure, as 

308 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

it turned out, a siege, the storm driving by their 
enforced habitation for thirty-six hours. Some idea 
of the Arctic conditions within the hotel may be 
gained from the facts that snow and ice lay piled all 
about from three inches to five feet deep, that the 
furniture was set in feathery white casings, and that 
snow-wreaths and icicles were everywhere on the 
walls and roof. Most magnificent scenes that beggar 
all description were witnessed; the sun was seen to 
set in a vast "snow-bank," and a hundred glittering 
peaks were beheld in the moonlight. A return to 
the Glen in another thick snowstorm completed a 
trip with which they afterwards felt "perfectly 
satisfied." 

These two winter ascents are all that are on record 
previous to the winter of 1870-71, during which, as 
will be related farther on, ascents were numerous. 

Before recording any more of these alpine experi- 
ences, however, the steps which brought about the 
establishment of a meteorological station on New 
England's highest summit, including especially the 
winter occupations of Moosilauke and Washington, 
demand notice. The two expeditions just mentioned, 
the stories of which are now to be narrated, not only 
demonstrated the possibility of human beings suc- 
cessfully braving the frost and storms of the Arctic 
winter of the summit of Mount Washington and 
enduring the inconveniences and privations incident 
to winter life in such a place, but also showed the 
feasibility of making and recording weather obser- 
vations under such circumstances. 

The project of a winter stay on Mount Washing- 
309 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ton was a long-cherished one in the minds of J. H. 
Huntington and C. H. Hitchcock, graduates of 
Amherst and associates on the geological surveys of 
Vermont and New Hampshire. 

The former, whose acquaintance with the White 
Mountains dated back to 1856 and 1857, first raised 
the question of the possibility of such an undertak- 
ing while accompanying an expedition, along Lake 
Champlain, of a survey party led by the latter in 
1858.^ At the same time he expressed a willingness 
to make the experiment. After Mr. Huntington had 
tried in vain to secure the pecuniary support of the 
Smithsonian Institution by appealing to Professor 
Joseph Henry, who declined to undertake the enter- 
prise at that time on account of the many obstacles 
in the way, and after Professor Hitchcock, who vis- 
ited the White Mountains for the first time later in 
that year, had also made an unsuccessful appeal to 
the same source, the project had to be abandoned. 
It was revived ten years later, when Professor 
Hitchcock was appointed State Geologist, and Mr. 
Huntington, recalling the old conversations about 
spending a winter on Mount Washington, applied 
for and received the appointment of an assistant on 
the geological survey. 

Application for the use of the Tip-Top House for 
scientific purposes during the winter of 1869-70 

^ In 1859, Jonathan Merrill, a then recent graduate of Dartmouth 
College, conceived the idea of spending a winter on Mount Washing- 
ton. He received the encouragement of Professor Henry, of the 
Smithsonian Institution, and was given permission to occupy one of 
the houses; but an unexpected snowstorm delayed some of his prep- 
arations, and this and other considerations compelled him to abandon 
the adventure. 

310 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

failed to secure the consent of the lessee, Colonel 
Hitchcock, of the Alpine House, a fortunate refusal 
for the applicants, as it proved, for Professor Hitch- 
cock having, in a conversation with William Little, 
of Manchester, made known to that gentleman his 
disappointment at not being able to secure quarters 
on Mount Washington, unexpectedly and to his 
great delight received from him the offer of the use 
without charge of the house on Mount Moosilauke. 
This proffer being communicated to Mr. Hunting- 
ton, he accepted it without a moment's hesitation, 
so eager was he to spend a winter at such a height. 

Supplies were carried to the summit of the Benton 
mountain and preparations were made to begin 
Arctic housekeeping the latter part of December. 
Huntington's expected companion having been com- 
pelled, in consequence of being offered an advan- 
tageous situation in Georgia, to give up his plan of 
spending the winter in a far different climate, the 
vacant position of fellow observer was filled by A. F. 
Clough, of Warren, a photographer by profession 
and a great lover of Nature. The experiences of this 
sojourn on Moosilauke proved not only valuable in 
and for themselves, but also as preliminary to the 
stay on the higher mountain the following winter. 
From a scientific standpoint, moreover, the stay here 
proved of great interest. Indeed, it is affirmed that 
so unusual were a number of the meteorological 
phenomena observed here that in some respects 
those of Mount Washington did not equal them. 

The first attempt to ascend the mountain for the 
purpose of carrying up wood and other supplies and 

311 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

of fitting up a room in the house failed because of a 
high wind with driving snow, which forced the men 
back by its fierceness and made the bridle path im- 
passable with huge drifts, A lame, frost-bitten, and 
discouraged group of men ate their evening meal at 
the foot of the mountain, the only cheerful and hope- 
ful person being James Clement, the pioneer of this 
mountain. The next day, November 24, 1869, being 
clear and bright and everything seeming propitious, 
another attempt to reach the summit was made, and 
this one was crowned with success. Two fine days 
and one cloudy one were experienced, in which 
period of time the preparatory work was completed. 
Provisions were not taken up until late in December, 
when they were transported on two large hand-sleds 
drawn by a horse. A furious storm arose the night 
of that expedition, making venturing out extremely 
hazardous; but, having no fodder for the horse, the 
descent had to be made the following day in intense 
cold and in a wind so fierce that the men could not 
keep their footing and were several times nearly 
blown over the crest of the ridge. On the last day of 
December, Messrs. Huntington and Clough ascended 
the mountain for their winter stay. 

In a chapter of the book "Mount Washington in 
Winter," Mr. Huntington tells in a most interesting 
way the story of the sojourn on this perhaps finest of 
New England viewpoints. Many were the grand 
and beautiful scenes beheld by the two observers 
from this outlook, over the snow-covered country 
in the various atmospheric conditions experienced, 
the summits of Mounts Washington, Lafayette, and 

312 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

the others, sublime in their canopy of snow, often 
glittering in the bright sunlight above the clouds, or 
presenting ashy pale or dark, forbidding aspects 
under the shadows of the clouds, or being suffused 
with rosy light at sunset. Hardly had the two men 
got settled in their new quarters, when, on the 2d of 
January, they were visited by a terrific storm, which 
changed from snow at daylight to sleet and then to 
rain, and which continued with unabated violence 
until 9 P.M., after which hour there were lulls, mid- 
night finding it considerably diminished in fury. At 
eight in the morning the velocity of the wind was 
seventy miles, and at twelve noon, when the storm 
had become "a perfect tempest," Mr. Clough, deter- 
mined to know the exact rate, succeeded, by clinging 
to the rocks, in placing himself where he could expose 
the anemometer and not be blown away himself, 
and found the velocity to be ninety-seven and a half 
miles an hour, the greatest ever recorded up to that 
time. 

Amid Arctic conditions and surroundings such as 
might be expected on so high and exposed a place, 
about two months were passed. When the last of 
February arrived, the weather being extremely cold 
and the winds violent and their supply of wood being 
nearly exhausted, it was deemed advisable to de- 
scend. This action was attended with much peril in 
a wind blowing seventy miles an hour and in a tem- 
perature of zero or lower, but was accomplished 
safely, in spite of the facts that on the highest part 
of the ridge, Huntington, as he tells us, was fre- 
quently blown from the ridge, and that the sled was 

313 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

blown out of Clough's hold and its standards broken 
on a projecting rock. Compelled by this mishap 
to go back some distance to secure another sled, 
Clough, after a severe struggle in which he was 
almost overwhelmed several times, eventually man- 
aged to achieve his purpose, and, when the reload- 
ing, no easy task under such conditions, had been 
effected, the travelers soon succeeded in reaching 
the protection of the woods. 

This stay on Moosilauke having demonstrated 
the possibility of living on a mountain-top in the 
winter and having fed the desire for the winter occu- 
pation of the loftier summit, early in 1870, Messrs. 
Hitchcock and Huntington began to contrive ways 
and means to this end. Renewed application for the 
Tip-Top House being refused in April, negotiations 
for the use of the engine-house or station that the 
Mount Washington Railway Company was intend- 
ing to erect on the Summit were opened with the 
president, Mr, Marsh, by letter and interviews, 
and eventually the desired permission was obtained, 
although the building was not completed. 

Efforts to obtain the necessary funds from State 
and National authorities,^ scientific bodies, and indi- 
viduals were unavailing. The Government would 

^ Probably the first attempt to establish a scientific observatory 
on Mount Washington was made in 1853 by D. O. Macomber, presi- 
dent of the Carriage Road Company. A circular was issued, setting 
forth the importance of such an enterprise and arguments in favor 
of erecting a permanent building on the top of Mount Washington 
for scientific purposes. A petition to Congress, dated December i, 
1853, asking for an appropriation of $50,000 and offering on the part 
of the road company to build an observatory for the use of the 
Government was presented, but nothing came of the project. . 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

not sanction any special arrangement to furnish any 
newspaper exclusively with weather reports (in re- 
turn for pecuniary support, which one New York 
journal offered on this condition), and it seemed 
probable that the undertaking would have to be 
abandoned when assistance came from an unex- 
pected quarter. In July, Mr. Durgin, of the Sinclair 
House in Bethlehem, informed Professor Hitchcock 
that a relative by marriage, S. A. Nelson, of George- 
town, Massachusetts, was very much interested in 
the meteorology of Mount Washington and would 
like to join the expedition. Mr. Nelson proposed, in 
case he should be permitted to be one of the party, 
to devote himself to raising funds, which, after the 
formal invitation extended had been accepted by 
him, he set about doing. Beginning in September, 
he succeeded in obtaining, by late December, when 
he joined the party on the Mountain, more than 
eight hundred dollars. 

The Chief Signal Officer, General A. B. Myer, 
offered in September to furnish insulated telegraph 
wire sufficient to connect the Summit with the Base, 
which, together with the necessary instruments, was 
duly received the following month. In November, 
he informed Professor Hitchcock that he would de- 
tail for duty with the expedition an expert operator 
and observer, with a complete set of meteorological 
instruments, and requested that one weather report 
might be forwarded to him daily by telegraph, to be 
bulletined along with those from other stations and 
to be furnished to the principal daily journals. 

Many other obstacles, more especially such as 
315 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

were connected with the purchase and transporta- 
tion of supplies, the preparation of the building for 
occupancy, and the procuring of additional funds, 
were eventually overcome, with the generous help of 
the railway company and with the assistance of ad- 
ditional subscribers secured as the result of a new 
appeal. 

The members of the expedition as finally organ- 
ized were: C. H. Hitchcock, State Geologist, with 
ofhce at Hanover, connected by telegraph with the 
Summit; J. H. Huntington, in charge of the ob- 
servatory; S. A. Nelson, observer; A. F. Clough, 
of Warren, and H. A. Kimball, of Concord, New 
Hampshire, photographers, the former the original 
artist of the expedition and the latter one who ap- 
plied for and received permission to join the party; 
and Sergeant Theodore Smith, observer and telegra- 
pher for the Signal Service. 

The evening of October 8, Mr. Huntington and a 
carpenter from Berlin Falls ascended, finding that 
Professor Hitchcock and several other men on 
pleasure bent had preceded them to the Summit for 
a brief visit. From the loth to the 22d, the two 
former worked at fitting up the room, laying the 
telegraph wire, and making other necessary prepa- 
rations. At length, everything being ready, Mr. 
Huntington promptly climbed the Mountain at the 
time appointed, November 12, and on the 13th 
began to take and record daily meteorological 
observations. 

The dauntless Huntington^ remained there alone 

^ The deep and narrow chasm, "less a ravine than a gulf," to the 

316 




OBSERVER, SUMMIT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON 
ABOUT 1875 




THE SUMMIT HOUSE IN WINTER, ABOUT 1S75 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

until November 30, when the two photographers, 
accompanied by Charles B. Cheney, of Orford, and 
C. F. Bracy, of Warren, arrived after a most thrilling 
experience in a wind of seventy miles an hour and a 
temperature down to zero or below. In this ascent 
Mr. Kimball became so extremely exhausted that 
his reason tottered and he became indifferent to his 
fate, and he would have perished had it not been for 
heroic measures to save him used by Messrs. Clough 
and Cheney. At the foot of Jacob's Ladder the men 
became separated, three of the party leaving the 
railroad track, while the other, Mr. Bracy, remained 
on it. The latter, after a narrow escape from death 
by falling through the trestle to the gorge beneath, 
reached the Summit about seven o'clock. The others, 
failing to get any answer from him in the roar of the 
tempest, made their way slowly by repeated short 
advances after brief rests in a prostrate position. 
Three hours or more of this ascent were made in the 
darkness of a moonless night, and it took half an 
hour's time to make the thirty rods from the Lizzie 
Bourne monument to the observatory. The inci- 
dents of this perilous adventure in such tempestuous 
weather, and under such other conditions as have 
been noted, rendered the experience unforgettable 
by its participants and make the account of it, 

north of Tuckerman's Ravine, was named "Huntington's Ravine" 
in his honor, by his companions in this expedition. Professor Hunt- 
ington was an indefatigable explorer of the White Hills. Sweetser, 
whose guide-book explorations were made in 1875, says of him: "To 
the last-named [Professor J. H. Huntington] the public owes all the 
best features of this White Mountain Guide-Book, since he accom- 
panied and practically directed the most arduous surveys and pio- 
neering expedition of the Guide parties." 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

as narrated in detail in "Mount Washington in 
Winter," impressive to the imagination of the 
reader. 

Sergeant Smith arrived on December 4, and on the 
2ist of that month Professor Hitchcock and Messrs. 
Nelson, L. B. Newell, Eben Thompson, and F. 
Woodbridge came up, making the party complete, 
with some visitors. 

Mr. Nelson and Sergeant Smith spent the entire 
winter on the Mountain, Professor Huntington most 
of it, and Messrs. Clough and Kimball a part of it. 
Professor Hitchcock joined his associates at the 
Summit from time to time, his last stay being from 
April 26 to May i. 

Visitors were fairly numerous and ever welcome. 
Some of them have been already named. L. L. 
Holden,^ "Ranger" of the Boston Journal, visited 
the Summit twice, once in February with another 
newspaper man, P. B. Cogswell, of the Concord Daily 
Monitor, and Mr. Clough as companions, and again 
from April 29 to May 9, his companions this time 
in the ascent being Professor Huntington, who had 
been down for a day or two to fulfill a lecture engage- 
ment, and Eben Thompson, of Dartmouth College, 
a previous visitor. Other visitors were Messrs. 
Walter and Charles L. Aiken, George C. Procter, 
and Michael ("Mike") Mularvey (of Marshfield) 
in February; the late Benjamin W. Kilburn, of 
Littleton, one of the pioneers in the art of stereo- 

* Mr. Holden's description of his ascent in February and his 
account of his ascent, experiences during his stay, and descent in 
the spring are printed in Mount Washington in Winter. 

318 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

graphic photography, Edward L. Wilson, editor of 
the Philadelphia Photographer, whose article on 
"Mount Washington in Winter" has been men- 
tioned, and "Mike" on March i and 2; Dr. Rogers 
and Mr. Nutter, of Lancaster, in March; Messrs. 
Clough and Cheney again, in April. ^ Seventy as- 
cents in all were made that winter by the indefati- 
gable Professor Huntington and others. 

The winter passed very pleasantly. There was 
much to do in keeping the telegraph line open and 
repairing breaks, in making the meteorological ob- 
servations, in 'housekeeping, in maintaining a com- 
fortable or at least livable degree of warmth within 
the house, in taking photographs, in writing reports, 
etc., and in various other duties. 

The lowest temperature experienced was 59° below 
zero at three a.m. on Sunday, February 5. The 
mean temperature for January 22 was -28.5°, and 
for February 4 was -35°. All day and all night of 
the former date the wind raged, at times blowing in 
gusts of every direction and of high velocity. With 
two fires maintained at red heat all night, two of the 
party sitting up for that purpose (there was little 
sleep for anybody), the room was cold. 

Saturday, February 4, was a strenuous day, as 
besides the intense cold the wind was very high, 
some of the gusts before morning undoubtedly at- 
taining a velocity of one hundred miles an hour. 

* This ascent, the most difficult one of the winter, was made on 
the 5th, in a furious snowstorm, the temperature being nearly zero 
and the wind at one time blowing more than eighty miles an hour. 
The men succeeded in it only because of their superior powers of 
endurance. 

319 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

The house rocked and trembled and groaned, 
movable articles were continually on the move, — 
books, for example, repeatedly dropping from the 
shelves. In ^'sawing off" a piece of salt pork, which 
operation was like "cutting into a block of gypsum," 
Mr. Nelson was out only five minutes, but froze his 
fingers. The butter for the Sunday morning break- 
fast had to be cut, with a chisel and hammer, from 
the tubs, which stood in the outer room. 

The highest wind velocity recorded was ninety- 
two miles an hour at seven o'clock in the evening of 
December 15, 1870, when the most severe storm of 
all that they experienced raged. After that hour it 
was not safe to venture out with the anemometer, 
for the wind kept increasing, reaching, it was esti- 
mated, at its highest a velocity from one hundred 
and ten to one hundred and twenty miles. During 
this storm so great was the force of the wind that 
three-inch planks bolted across the opening in the 
shed where the train enters were pressed in four or 
more inches and the whole building had an unpleas- 
ant vibratory motion. 

On many days the high winds and stormy condi- 
tions confined the observers to the house; observa- 
tions were often taken under great difficulties and 
at considerable peril on this account; and many a 
night sleep was well-nigh impossible on account of 
the roaring of the wind, the creaking and groaning 
and oscillation of the building, and the noise due to 
the driving of particles of ice by the wind against it. 
Repairing the telegraph line, a frequent necessity, 
gave occasion for some arduous and often dangerous 

320 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

trips down the railway, and many times other trips 
were taken which entailed severe exposure. 

Altogether, the "expedition" was a most notable 
one, not only for its scientilic importance, but also 
for its human interest as demonstrating what severe 
conditions of winter cold and wind and storm human 
beings can successfully endure for a prolonged 
period. I have devoted so much space to it not only 
because of this intrinsic interest, but because of the 
attention it attracted at the time and of its historical 
importance.^ From time to time there appeared in 
the newspapers references to the occupation of the 
summit of Mount Washington, expressing the opin- 
ions of various writers, either upon the facts reported 
or upon the general prospects of the adventure. 
Many regarded the project as idiotic, lunatic, or 
perfectly chimerical, and the participants in it as a 
party of maniacs. 

True to the American tendency to burlesque, 
many of the articles about the expedition were of a 
facetious character, one writer even preparing what 
purported to be an official report of the expedition, 
with a burlesque journal of "each day's proceedings." 

Convinced that Mount Washington was a desir- 
able place for a weather station, the feasibility and 
value of winter observations on it and from it hav- 
ing been by this expedition amply demonstrated, 

* All of the information here summarized, and much more, is con- 
tained in that most entertaining, instructive, and otherwise inter- 
esting volume, Mount Washington in Winter, prepared by all the 
members of this remarkable expedition as their "official report" to 
those friends who furnished the means for establishing and main- 
taining this Arctic observatory. 

321 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the United States Signal Service, immediately upon 
the departure of the voluntary observers, took up, 
on May 13, 1871, the work of carrying on meteoro- 
logical observations, and thereafter maintained the 
station continuously until the autumn of 1887 and 
in summer for five years more. During this period 
an immense amount of valuable data as to the 
weather conditions of this point was obtained and 
recorded. 

Great were the hardships endured by these serv- 
ants of the Government and thrilling were some of 
the incidents of this service on a mountain-top. At 
four in the morning one day in January, 1877,^ the 
wind reached the velocity, never equaled elsewhere, 
of one hundred and eighty-six miles an hour. In this 
gale was blown down the engine-shed, used by the 
winter party of 1870-71, and by the Government 
observers until the erection of the Signal Station in 
1874, and the board walk leading from the hotel to 
the Signal Station was demolished, the boards being 
carried as if they were straws and scattered far and 
wide in wild confusion over the top and sides of the 
Mountain. 

This almost inconceivable velocity was equaled at 
least once subsequently and a rate of one hundred 
and eighty miles an hour was attained several times. 
In February, 1886, in one of the greatest storms ever 

' I get this date from Drake, The Heart of the White Mountains. 
The author tells, in chapters vii and viii of hjs "Second Journey," 
of his ascent and descent by the carriage road and stay on the Summit 
in May, 1877, when he saw the boards scattered about and was in- 
formed that the engine-house had been blown down in the January 
gale. Private Doyle's story, as narrated farther on, is given in this 
source. 

322 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

known, the mercury dropped to 51° below zero and 
the wind lashed the Summit with a fury which 
threatened to sweep it clear of the works of man. 
One building was torn down, some of its constituent 
parts being flung violently against the stanch little 
Signal Station, which, fortunately, was so protected 
by a tough thick coating of frost feathers that its 
doors, windows, and roof escaped. During this gale, 
when a rate of one hundred and eighty-four miles 
was recorded, the anemometer itself was carried 
away from its bearings. 

Private Doyle, who was on duty in the station at 
the time of the great storm of January, 1877, has 
related his recollections of it. Anticipating, from the 
aspect of the heavens in the afternoon preceding the 
gale, when the clouds spread for miles around — an 
ocean of frozen vapor — and became, late in the day, 
so dense as to reflect the colors of the spectrum, that 
some great atmospheric disturbance was impending, 
the observers made everything snug for a storm. By 
nine in the evening, the wind had increased to one 
hundred miles an hour, with heavy sleet, making 
outside observations unsafe. At midnight, the veloc- 
ity of the storm was one hundred and twenty miles 
and the thermometer registered - 24°. Within the 
house, with the stove red, it was hard to get the 
temperature above freezing, and water froze within 
three feet of the fire. The uproar was deafening. At 
one o'clock, the wind rose to one hundred and fifty 
miles, raising the carpet a foot from the floor, and 
dashing all the loose ice on top of the Mountain 
against the building in one continuous volley. Not 

323 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

long after came a crash of glass. With the greatest 
difficulty the two men, working in the dark, suc- 
ceeded in closing the storm-shutters from the inside. 
Hardly had they done this, when a heavy gust burst 
them open again, apparently as easily as if they had 
not been fastened at all. After a hard tussle, they 
again secured the windows by nailing a cleat to the 
floor and using a board as a lever. "Even then," said 
Private Doyle, "it was all we could do to force the 
shutters back into place. But we did it. We had to 
do it." The remainder of the night was spent in an 
anxious and alarmed state of mind, as was but nat- 
ural when they did not know but that at any mo- 
ment the building would be carried over into Tucker- 
man's Ravine and they swept into eternity with it. 
Doyle and his companion took the precaution to 
wrap themselves up in blankets and quilts, tied 
tightly around them with ropes, to which were fas- 
tened bars of iron. But these desperate measures to 
afford a possible chance of safety in case the station 
succumbed to the gale proved unnecessary, for the 
stout little building, anchored to the rocks by cables, 
successfully weathered this gale and all others. 

Many similar experiences were encountered by 
these observers and others. Sometimes the frost 
feathers so obscured the windows that lights were 
required in the daytime; at other times the wind 
tore so through the building that the lamps could 
not burn. 

On account of the dreadful solitude of this remote 
and lonesome place and for fear of accidents, the 
Government always maintained at least two men in 

324 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

the station and sometimes there were three or four, 
including a cook, and a cat and a dog.^ Their duties 
were multifarious and their time was fully occupied. 
Seven observations had to be made daily, the record- 
ing-sheet of the anemometer had to be changed at 
noon, and three of the seven observations had to be 
forwarded in cipher to the Boston Station. There 
was much routine office work, including the receiv- 
ing and sending of letters, and the filling of blank 
forms with statistics. The battery and wire of the 
telegraph outfit demanded much attention, and the 
making of repairs, often involving the risk of the 
observers' lives in storm and cold in searching for 
and mending a break, was no inconsiderable part of 
their work. The stock of food supplies was replen- 
ished in September, the "refrigerator" (the top 
story of the station) being stocked with meat and 
poultry already frozen. The water supply came from 
the frost feathers, a stock of which was always kept 
on hand, and an icy cold drink of which could always 
be found on the stove, unless the cook failed of his 
duty. 

The personnel of the station was changed fre- 
quently. Sergeant Smith, who was detailed to 
accompany the voluntary expedition, was relieved, 
toward the end of May, 1871, by Sergeant M. L. 

^ Many visitors to the Summit in former days were acquainted 
with the beautiful St. Bernard dog, "Medford," whose graceful form 
and pleasing traits made him a favorite with all. Brought to the 
Mountain when he was a few months old, " Medford " spent his sum- 
mers at the Summit House and his winters at the Signal Station with 
the weather observers, whom he often accompanied on their trips 
down the Mountain for the mail. One of the best-known dogs in the 
country in his lifetime, he was often inquired for after his death. 

325 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Hearne. The saddest and most harrowing experi- 
ence of any observer befell this gentleman. On 
February 26, 1872, his assistant, William Stevens, 
died of paralysis. For a day and two nights, Ser- 
geant Hearne was alone with the dead body, as no 
one could come up on account of the hurricane and 
cold. " I look years older," he wrote, "than when it 
occurred." When aid came, a rude coffin and sled 
were made and a solemn procession of men moved 
slowly down the mountain-side over the snow with 
the mortal remains of the unfortunate observer. 

Sergeant O. S. M. Cone, who spent one summer 
and winter only (1877-78) at the station, when re- 
lieved because of sickness, improvised a sled with a 
kind of safety brake and attempted with his com- 
panion, D. C. Murphy, and with his trunk, to coast 
down the track. When about halfway down, the 
brake gave way and the sled and its passengers were 
hurled from a high trestle. Almost miraculously 
they escaped death. Cone, however, being seriously 
injured. 

A melancholy interest attaches to the connection 
of one observer with the station, in view of his sad 
fate a few years after his service here. Sergeant W. S. 
Jewell, who was in charge from 1878 to 1880, was 
given this detail at his own request, that he might 
fit himself for service in the Arctic regions. A mem- 
ber of the ill-fated Greely expedition, he was the 
first of that unhappy company to succumb, perish- 
ing from starvation in April, 1884. 

Naturally, during the winters that the Summit 
was occupied, ascents were numerous, as the hardy 

326 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

climbers knew that there was a warm welcome and 
a comfortable shelter at the end of their climb. The 
numerous ones made during the first winter of occu- 
pation have been already mentioned. Several diffi- 
cult or perilous ones are recorded by Edward L. 
Wilson as participated in by him. Mention has 
already been made of his ascent with B. W. Kilburn 
in March, 1871.^ Photography was the principal 
object of these gentlemen, who together made five 
visits to the Summit in winter. 

In the 1 87 1 ascent, the travelers followed in the 
main the course of the railroad track, and all went 
well until long after the tree-line was passed, al- 
though they had found walking on snowshoes, with 
seventy-five pounds of photographic paraphernalia 
(the "wet" process was all that was then known) 
and other baggage to carry, warm work. Soon after 
they had passed the halfway point on the railway, 
they entered a cloud and were assailed by a cold 
northeast sleet-storm, in which they could not see a 
yard ahead. Suddenly the wind became more vio- 
lent and erratic so that they could not stand alone. 
Joined arm in arm, they advanced sidewise with the 
greatest difficulty up the steepest part of the climb 
in the darkness, passing Jacob's Ladder, for which 
they looked as a landmark to guide them, without 
seeing it. They floundered on, confused and bewil- 

1 Mr. Kilburn kept a camera and photographic apparatus at the 
Summit for seven years from 187 1 and came up every winter, wit- 
nessing some terrible storms and having some severe experiences in 
taking his famous winter views. He once saved Sergeant Hearne's 
life, when the latter was overcome at Jacob's Ladder, by carrying 
the observer bodily up the remaining one and a half miles of icy 
track. 

327 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

dered by the storm, for some time as best they could, 
and at length suddenly came upon the engine-shed, 
where they were made welcome by Messrs. Nelson 
and Smith. ^ 

The fifth and last ascent of the two photographers 
was made March 2, 1886. This time there was no 
heavy baggage to carry, as the "dry" processes of 
photography had been invented. They were met 
before they reached the tree-line by "Medford" and 
two members of the Signal Service, to whom they 
had telegraphed their start from the Base. Leaving 
their snowshoes at the tree-line, they made their way 
first on the rock and crust, which were so discourag- 
ingly wet and slippery that they left them for the 
cog rail. This proving too dangerously icy, as a last 
resort they betook themselves to the cross-ties, on 
which there were a few inches of new snow. Over 
this hard road they succeeded in reaching the Sum- 
mit. At times it required desperate effort to hold 
their own against the wind, and on Jacob's Ladder 
they were forced to resort to "all-fours," and more 
than once to lie flat and hold firmly to the sleepers 
until a gust had spent its strength. "Taken alto- 
gether," Mr. Wilson declares, "this was the most 
difficult ascent we made." 

A most perilous ascent, which nearly cost the 
climber his life, is narrated by the writer just quoted. 
It was performed by Sergeant William Line, who 
served on Mount Washington three years (1874-77), 
and occurred on November 23, 1875. The day was 

' This ascent and others are pleasantly described by Mr. Wilson 
in the volume Mountain Climbing (1897). 

328 



THE SUMMITS IN WINTER 

unpromising, and against his better judgment he 
left Fabyan at about 9 a.m., with the mail for the 
Summit. All went well as far as the foot of Jacob's 
Ladder, which point was reached at one o'clock, 
after two hours of hard work from the Base. There 
the snow was several feet deep, and the gusts began 
to increase in force and frequency, so that he could 
advance only by a few steps in the lulls, being com- 
pelled to lie flat in the intervals of high wind. Once 
his body was blown up against the cross-ties of the 
railroad and held there for some time. At length he 
succeeded in approaching the Gulf Station-House, 
which it seemed for a time impossible to reach, as he 
could not stand in such a wind, or even breathe 
facing it. Finally, by lying down and, feet first, 
backing up the drift near the building, and by falling 
down the other side of the drift, he gained the house. 
After several futile attempts to continue his ascent, 
he returned to the building to pass the night. Here 
he found to his consternation that he had lost his 
match-box, and that his life depended upon his being 
able to light a single damp match which he had in 
his vest-pocket. Luckily he was successful in ignit- 
ing it. In the morning he resumed his way and was 
making good progress, when, near the Summit, he 
met his exceedingly anxious companion, Mr. King, 
coming down the Mountain in search of him. Hardly 
had they arrived when they heard voices, and soon 
Mr. Kilburn and two other men appeared coming 
up out of the fog. The photographer had been in- 
formed by telegraph about midnight that the ob- 
server was lost and had immediately started from 

329 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Littleton to go in search of him, requesting the others 
to join him. 

Professor Huntington, who made many ascents, 
some of them dangerous, during his winter stay on 
the Mountain in 1870-71, made what is recorded as 
the most perilous one, late in November, 1873, when 
the thermometer stood at 17° below zero and the 
velocity of the wind was seventy-two miles an hour. 

Place aux dames I The first women to climb Mount 
Washington in winter were — worthy offspring of a 
noble sire ! — two daughters of the pioneer, Ethan 
Allen Crawford. Mrs. Orville E. Freeman, of Lan- 
caster, New Hampshire, and Mrs. Charles Durgin, 
of Andover, New Hampshire, in company with their 
brother William H. Crawford, of Jefferson, and their 
nephew Ethan Allen Crawford, of Jefferson High- 
lands, accomplished the feat on a mild afternoon in 
January, 1874, walking up the railroad track and 
spending the night in the Signal Station. At the out- 
set they did not anticipate going to the top, but, 
finding progress not so very difficult, they kept on. 
They made the entire distance in three hours. Mrs. 
Freeman described the trip as "glorious fun" and 
expressed the hope that all her women friends might 
enjoy the pleasure of making it in winter. The win- 
ter ascent was not again, however, made by a woman 
until Dr. Mary R. Lakeman, of Salem, Massachu- 
setts, achieved it with a party of Appalachians, who 
walked up from the Glen House by the carriage road 
in February, 1902. 



XV 

LATER HOTELS 

I HAVE already set down, in a previous chapter 
devoted to the subject, such facts as I have been 
able to gather regarding the early hotels of the White 
Mountain region, bringing the chronicles of hotel- 
keeping there down to 1870, or thereabouts. In the 
seventies the building of the extensions of the already 
existing railroads and of an entirely new main line 
to the Mountains, the Portland and Ogdensburg, 
greatly stimulated travel thither, thousands of sum- 
mer visitors coming where hundreds came before. 
As a necessary consequence of this increase of travel, 
an era of hotel construction and enlargement began, 
to continue for a period of thirty years, or until the 
advent of the motor age, with its changed conditions 
of summer recreation, put an end to the old order of 
things in summer resorts and especially to hotel 
development along the old lines. During this period 
of thirty years or so from 1870 on, there came into 
existence, then, many hotels and boarding-houses. 
These, by reason of the attractiveness of their loca- 
tion, the excellence of their cuisines, and the general 
high degree of comfort and convenience provided, 
have done much to draw visitors to the region and 
to increase and to spread far and wide that high 
repute of White Mountain hospitality which the 
older hotels had created by the excellence of their 
accommodations. 

331 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Of these places of entertainment some are still 
taking care of patrons as satisfactorily as ever with- 
out increased room, but many more have been either 
largely rebuilt or succeeded by more capacious and 
elegant houses on the same sites, while yet others 
have succumbed to the fire fiend and have never 
been rebuilt. Space can be taken to narrate the 
history of only a few of the more important of these 
establishments. 

Systematic attempts at the development of Beth- 
lehem as a summer resort began toward the close of 
the Civil War. In 1859, the Sinclair, now the leading 
hotel of Bethlehem village, was a small two-story 
and a half gabl^-roof house — a "well-kept stage 
tavern with a few rooms for boarders." As business 
increased, additions had to be made from time to 
time and the older portions of the structure had to 
be modernized. Thus, the huge and commodious 
hostelry of to-day has developed by successive in- 
crements and alterations. 

In 1863, the Honorable Henry Howard, of Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island, who was afterward governor 
of that State, was visiting the region with a party, 
and, the coach in which he was coming down Mount 
Agassiz being overturned and most of its occupants 
severely injured, several weeks were necessarily 
spent in Bethlehem until the injured ones recovered 
sufficiently to go to their homes. During this stay 
Governor Howard spied out the land and was greatly 
impressed with the healthfulness and attractiveness 
of the village's location. Becoming convinced that 
Bethlehem had great possibilities as a summer re- 

332 



LATER HOTELS 

sort, he made extensive purchases of land there, and 
showed his faith in the opinions he had formed as 
to the future of the place by selling building-lots on 
credit and by lending money to those who were dis- 
posed to go into the summer-hotel business. 

When it was discovered that, in addition to its 
unusual general healthfulness, Bethlehem afforded 
speedy relief to visitors who were afflicted with hay- 
fever, a new element was added, for many people, to 
the charms of the place. The adoption of Bethlehem 
as the headquarters of the American Hay-Fever Asso- 
ciation has made the fame of the village nation-wide. 

Since the time of Governor Howard's activity in 
promoting the development of Bethlehem, houses 
for the care of summer boarders, who have become 
the town's chief, and indeed almost its only, source 
of revenue, have multiplied until they are counted 
by the score. The people of the town were, it is said, 
somewhat slow to appreciate their opportunity, but 
when, at length, the destiny of the place became 
evident to them, they were very willing to hasten its 
development, and provision was made for a water 
supply, sewer system, and other adjuncts necessary 
to make the village an attractive place of residence. 
The spirit of enterprise has ever since characterized 
the town and no steps have been left untaken to 
attract summer visitors. Bethlehem's frequenters 
number annually many thousands. In August and 
September, in the height of the hay-fever season, 
the village is the place of sojourn of many victims of 
this distressing malady, who return year after year, 
thus constituting a permanent clientele for the hotels 

333 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

and boarding-houses, and there are also staying in 
the village many other people, who enjoy the won- 
derful air, the coolness, the fine views, and the pleas- 
ant life of this highest of New Hampshire villages. 

Another man whose name has become indissolu- 
bly connected with Bethlehem was Isaac S. Cruft, a 
Boston merchant, who came to the village in 1871. 
His business sagacity made him realize the sound- 
ness of Governor Howard's belief as to the possibili- 
ties there and led him to acquire a large tract of land 
for summer-resort purposes. This property, known 
as the "Maplewood Farm," is situated about a mile 
east of the center of Bethlehem at the point on the 
highway to Fabyan where the Whitefield road joins 
it. The comfortable farmhouse then standing on 
this sightly location was remodeled and opened as 
a hotel. The new resort immediately sprang into 
favor. In 1876, Mr. Cruft erected on the site an 
elegant and spacious hotel, the celebrated Maple- 
wood. Its magnificent distant view of the Presiden- 
tial Range and the excellence of its appointments 
soon caused the hotel to grow into high favor, neces- 
sitating the building, in 1878, of a large addition. 
Maplewood, which has its own railroad station and 
post-office, a group of cottages, a large and attrac- 
tive casino and spacious grounds, and which pro- 
vides every comfort and luxury that can be thought 
of and facilities for all kinds of indoor and outdoor 
diversion, has long been a fashionable resort and has 
ever ranked among the foremost of the great Moun- 
tain hotels. 

The Twin Mountain House, located in the Am- 
334 



LATER HOTELS 

monoosuc Valley five miles west of Fabyan, with 
stations on the Boston and Maine and Maine Cen- 
tral Railroads, was built in 1869-70. It was at first 
a small house, — only a cottage, — but by additions 
and changes it soon became a capacious hostelry, 
now one of the landmarks of the Mountains. Its 
first proprietor was Asa Barron, whose son, the late 
Colonel Oscar G. Barron, was brought here, a boy 
of nineteen, in 1869. For two years, Oscar Barron 
was associated with C. H. Merrill, who was the man- 
ager of the hotel; but in 1872, Mr. Merrill went to 
the Crawford House, where he remained until the 
close of the season of 1907, and young Barron be- 
came the manager. During the next six years the 
Twin Mountain House developed, under the land- 
lordship of Colonel Barron and his father, until it 
became famous, its cuisine and its social life being 
"justly celebrated." It was also highly reputed as a 
hay-fever refuge. These were the days of its glory. 
Henry Ward Beecher returned year after year. 
President Grant was a visitor, and many distin- 
guished persons of the literary and social world en- 
joyed the hospitality of the Barrons. The prestige 
then acquired still lingers about the old house. In 
1878, Asa Barron leased the Fabyan House, and 
four years later the noted hotel firm of Barron, 
Merrill, and Barron was formed, which association 
has been continued ever since. The Twin Mountain 
House has remained under the proprietorship of the 
company of this name, which also conducts the 
Fabyan House, the Crawford House, and the hotel 
on the summit of Mount Washington. 

335 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Mention has just been made of the Fabyan House. 
As the building of that famous hotel in the Ammo- 
noosuc Valley follows in time that of the Twin 
Mountain House, the narration of its origin and 
subsequent history may well come here. After the 
burning of Horace Fabyan's Mount Washington 
House, in the spring of 1853, there arose a legal con- 
troversy over the ownership of the land constituting 
the original hotel site of the Mountains, which pre- 
vented the immediate rebuilding of the hotel. Dur- 
ing the autumn of 1858, the stables, which the pre- 
vious fire had spared, were struck by lightning and 
destroyed. The legal difficulties must have dragged 
along, for the traveler through the Ammonoosuc 
Valley, between Crawford's and Bethlehem or 
Franconia in the fifties and sixties, saw only ruins 
at the Giant's Grave and found the White Mountain 
House, about a mile farther on, the only house of 
entertainment in this vicinity. 

At length, a stock company, called the Mount 
Washington Hotel Company, and composed of 
Messrs. Hartshorn, Walcott, and Sylvester Marsh, 
was chartered, and, in 1872, work was begun on a 
new hotel at the Giant's Grave, which mound was 
at that time removed to obtain a level site.^ This, 
the present hotel, called the "Fabyan House" in 
honor of the proprietor of the previous hotel here, 
was opened to guests in 1873. After the opening of 
the White Mountains Railroad to this point in 1874 
and after the completion of the Portland and Ogdens- 
burg from the east as far as here in the following 

^ Sweetser characterized this as "a needless act of vandalism." 

336 



LATER HOTELS 

year, this location, as the place of changing cars in 
the journey through the Mountains and as the 
starting-point for the trip up Mount Washington, 
soon became the busiest of White Mountain railway 
centers, which it has remained to this day. 

The first landlord of the Fabyan House was John 
Lindsey, one of the old-time stage-drivers of this 
region. He, with his partner, Mr. French, remained 
in charge until 1878, when, as has been already 
noted, the hotel was leased by Asa Barron, of the 
Twin Mountain House, who with his son, Oscar, 
left the latter that year and came here. Then began 
Colonel Oscar G. Barron's famous connection with 
the Fabyan House, which lasted for thirty-five years. 
To his genial hospitality and thorough knowledge of 
hotel-keeping the Fabyan House chiefly owes the 
popularity which has characterized it through all 
these years. 

Colonel Barron's warm-hearted personality en- 
deared him to all who in any way came in contact 
with him. His services to the town of Carroll and 
to the White Mountains in general, as by his efforts 
to further and upbuild the summer-resort business 
and by his advocacy of the bill for making the 
Crawford Notch a State reservation, made his death 
in January, 1913, a heavy blow to the White Moun- 
tain community. 

Another well-known and popular hostelry in this 
locality is the Mount Pleasant House, a half-mile 
east of the Fabyan House, which, as erected in 1876 
by John T. G. Leavitt, was a very different-looking 
structure from the one the traveler sees to-day. In 

337 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

1 88 1, Joseph Stickney became interested in it and 
rebuilt it. Abbott L. Fabyan, son of Horace, man- 
aged it for ten years for Barron, Merrill, and Barron, 
to whom it was leased. In 1895, it was transformed 
into virtually a new establishment, the present large 
and comfortable hotel, which achieved a high repu- 
tation under the skillful management of the firm of 
Anderson and Price. 

The story of the Glen House, the celebrated hotel 
on the east side of the Presidential Range in the 
valley of the Peabody River, has been brought down 
elsewhere to the death by drowning, in 1869, of its 
first landlord, Mr. Thompson. Two years later, the 
hotel passed to the control of Charles R. Milliken 
and his brother, Weston F. Milliken. These enter- 
prising business men believed that increased patron- 
age would follow efforts to provide accommodations 
superior to those travelers had been putting up with, 
and in their hands the house took a new start and 
developed into a first-class hotel. This type of man- 
agement, combined with the advantageous location 
of the Glen House, far from the noise and bustle of 
railways and villages, and commanding one of the 
grandest views in the Mountains, soon put it in the 
front rank of popular favor. An era of prosperity 
set in, during which addition after addition was 
made to the old structure until it became an aggre- 
gation of buildings. This increase of business and 
favor continued unbroken until the autumn of 1884 
arrived. The last guests had gone and the house was 
being closed on October i for the season, when it 
was suddenly discovered to be on fire. The fire, 

338 




THE FIRST GLEN HOUSE 



■';??! 










THE SECOND GLEN HOUSE, 1885-1893 



LATER HOTELS 

fanned by a strong northeaster, spread with great 
rapidity. Soon all was a mass of flames, and in two 
hours what had constituted a good-sized village in 
itself was but a heap of ashes. 

The destruction of this hotel, in which so many 
thousands had been entertained, was a heavy blow, 
not only to the proprietors, but to the traveling 
public. Without a hotel the region was at once 
thrown back into its primitive solitude, and, more- 
over, an important link in the chain of Mountain 
tours was broken. It was a public misfortune. 

Although the pecuniary loss the complete destruc- 
tion of the Glen House involved was a serious one, 
its proprietors were not disheartened, but immedi- 
ately took steps toward the building of a new hotel 
on the same site. The old building was, as has been 
indicated, a growth, and was in no sense a modern 
structure. It was decided to erect in its place a 
homogeneous building, attractive in its architecture 
and characterized by simple elegance and solid com- 
fort in its appointments. The architect chosen, 
F. H. Fassett, planned a house in the English cot- 
tage style. It was nearly three hundred feet long, 
was three stories in height above the basement, and 
was provided with a veranda of about four hundred 
and fifty feet in length. Within, both the public 
rooms and the private rooms were pleasing in their 
appearance and commodious, while their furniture 
and fittings were in good taste and often luxurious. 

The design was so far carried into effect that a 
new hotel was opened to the public for the season of 
1885. It was, however, not fully consummated until 

339 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

the season of 1887, when the huge and attractive 
structure, with its accommodations for five hundred 
guests, stood complete, as if risen, phoenixlike, from 
the ashes of the old. The new Glen House immedi- 
ately sprang into high favor with the Mountain 
sojourners of the well-to-do variety and was soon 
enjoying a large patronage. But, alas! the years of 
its existence were to be few. It would almost seem 
as if there were a curse upon this site similar to that 
which tradition had attached to the Giant's Grave 
location on the other side of the Range, for on Sun- 
day evening, July 16, 1893, this magnificent struc- 
ture caught fire from some unknown cause and in a 
few hours the site was again desolate. This disaster, 
by which a property of about a quarter of a million 
dollars was either destroyed or, by the destruction 
of the means of accommodating visitors, rendered 
largely valueless, was an overwhelming one to the 
proprietors and to the locality itself. The Glen 
House has not so far been rebuilt. The stables re- 
main, and in them are kept the horses and wagons 
for the ascent of Mount Washington by the carriage 
road. The business of carrying passengers up and 
down the Mountain, conducted here, has kept the 
Glen from being abandoned. Of recent years the 
building which was used as the servants' quarters 
of the hotel, and which escaped the fire, accommo- 
dates a few guests, usually those of the pedestrian 
class or persons of similar simple tastes, under the 
name of the Glen House. 

The new house of 1885-93 had too brief an exist- 
ence to acquire much in the way of a tradition, but 

340 



LATER HOTELS 

about its famous predecessor of 1852-84 gathered 
many happy memories. Many noted persons visited 
it either as regular guests or as transients who had 
come to make the stage trip to the summit of Mount 
Washington. One famous habitue of the old house 
has his memory perpetuated in a roadside spring 
not far away. He, "Josh Billings," was a great trout 
fisherman, and in the seventies he used to practice 
his favorite diversion upon the streams in this vicin- 
ity, even penetrating, in his quest for the speckled 
beauties, into the lower sections of the Great Gulf. 
Those who visited the Glen House in those days 
often saw him, "deep-eyed and hirsutely aureoled, 
and talking much of trout in language which, even 
in its spoken form, reveals how preciously distinct, 
subtle, and blessed its orthography must be." 

The history of the hotels in the Franconia Notch 
has been already brought down to the year 1872, 
when the present Flume House was built. The next 
event in this locality, the building of the Profile and 
Franconia Notch Railroad, has also been recorded. 
The scenic beauties and natural curiosities of the 
district have always attracted many visitors, and 
hotels of the highest rank have been maintained 
there to minister to the wants of permanent and 
transient guests. The great hotel, the Profile House, 
at the northern entrance of the Notch, particularly, 
is one of the famous summer-resort hotels of America. 
The hotel and the group of cottages, with the rail- 
road station, the stables, etc., constitute a little 
world in themselves. The fine appointments, the 
cuisine, the opportunities for amusements of various 

341 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

kinds, the social life, and other features of the Pro- 
file House have always secured for it a liberal patron- 
age of refined and cultured people, many of whom 
have made the settlement their summer home for 
many years. In 1898, a stock company was formed 
to hold the Franconia Notch property. Business 
having increased and the famous old hotel having 
come to be regarded as inadequate, the erection of 
a new hotel was decided upon by the owners. Ac- 
cordingly, in the autumn of 1905, the old house was 
torn down, and on July i, 1906, the New Profile 
House, a caravanserai of luxurious appointments, 
was opened to the public. 

So numerous were the houses of entertainment 
that date from the period of which I am writing 
that it would take considerable space merely to 
name them. I shall tarry but to give the principal 
facts concerning a few others at important places 
before closing this record of the Mountain hotels 
with an account of the building of the great Mount 
Washington Hotel at Bretton Woods. 

The Sunset Hill House at Sugar Hill was built in 
1879 and the Deer Park at North Woodstock was 
opened in 1887. The now celebrated Waumbek 
Hotel at Jefferson was the result of a remodeling 
completed in 1889, the plain but substantial house 
built thirty years before being thereby transformed 
into the commodious and elegant structure of to-day. 
A popular hotel of to-day which represents an inter- 
esting development is the Mountain View House 
at Whitefield, which, beginning from a farmhouse, 
where a passing traveler obtained shelter in 1866, 

342 



LATER HOTELS 

has become by successive additions, the last opened 
in 1912, a large and attractive house. In Septem- 
ber, 1898, the Willey Hotel, which Horace Fabyan 
had built in the Notch many years before, was, 
with its companion building, the historic old Willey 
House, burned to the ground. 

It remains now only to relate the circumstances 
of the most considerable hotel-building enterprise 
ever undertaken in the White Mountains, that of the 
erection of the Mount Washington. This particular 
undertaking differed in conception from most similar 
projects of recent years in that the hotel was erected 
on a site that had never before been occupied. It is 
said that the original builders of the Mount Pleasant 
saw the advantages of the location and entertained 
a vague idea of sometime building there. Nothing 
at any rate came of the plan, however, until the 
late Joseph Stickney, of New York, a capitalist of 
New Hampshire birth, who, as we have seen, had 
become owner of the Mount Pleasant House early 
in the eighties, entered upon the development of 
the project and carried it through to a successful 
conclusion. As the result of this gentleman's enter- 
prise and command of large means, one of the most 
magnificent summer hotels in the world stands 
about a mile from Fabyan upon a little plateau 
seventy or eighty feet above the Ammonoosuc 
River, with its eastern outlook toward Mount Wash- 
ington and the Presidential Range. The architect 
was Charles Ailing Gifford, of New York, and the 
style of the architecture is of the Spanish Renais- 
sance. The general shape is that of a capital letter 

343 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Y, and prominent features are two octagonal towers, 
five stories in height, between which is the main 
portion of the structure. The foundation is of 
granite, the blocks where exposed being left in a 
rough finish, and the superstructure is of wood, 
covered with light-colored cement, laid upon a steel 
network, the whole building being as nearly fireproof 
as possible. The kitchen is in a detached building. 
The interior of the hotel is fitted with every conven- 
ience, comfort, and luxury that experience can sug- 
gest and the liberal expenditure of money provide. 
Active work was begun on the hotel in June, 1901, 
and construction was carried rapidly forward, so 
that the hotel was opened to the public July 28, 
1902. The company owning this hotel and the 
Mount Pleasant also owns an extensive tract of 
land, much of it virgin forest, around the hotels. 
Roads, bridle paths, and trails have been built in 
this area, the immediate grounds of the Mount 
Washington have been elaborately laid out, and 
every facility for outdoor games and amusements 
has been provided. In the summer the Mount 
Washington and its appurtenances constitute a city 
in themselves, so far as completeness of equipment 
and of provision for every possible demand of guests 
is concerned. 



XVI 

EARLY TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS — THE 

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN CLUB AND ITS 

WORK IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

The building of the first paths to the summit of 
Mount Washington by the Crawfords, as well as 
that of the bridle path thither from the Glen House, 
has been already mentioned. Probably the first path 
made on the Northern Peaks was the Stillings Path, 
which, starting from the Randolph-Jefferson High- 
way in Jefferson Highlands, extended for nine 
miles to a point about a mile from the Castellated 
Ridge, whence Mount Washington could be reached 
over the slopes of Jefferson and Clay. It was this 
path that was used in carrying up the lumber for 
the Summit House of Rosebrook and Perkins, and 
so it is known to have been in existence as early as 
1852. In i860 or 1 861, a partial trail over the peaks 
to Mount Washington, some sections of which are 
still in existence, was made by Gordon the guide. 
It was in 1875 that the first path up Mount Adams, 
which is the oldest of those now maintained on the 
Northern Peaks, was constructed by William G. 
Nowell, a very active trail-builder in later years, and 
Charles E. Lowe, a guide long favorably known to 
visitors to that region, and from 1895 to his death 
in 1907 proprietor of the Mount Crescent House 
at Randolph. Until 1880, Lowe's Path, as it was 

345 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

named, was maintained as a toll-path. It is now an 
Appalachian Mountain Club path. In 1876, Pro- 
fessor J. Rayner Edmands had Mr. Lowe cut a 
branch path through King's Ravine, and in the 
same year Mr. Nowell built the first camp on the 
Northern Peaks. 

An early path up Mount Washington from the 
south was completed in 1845 by Nathaniel T. P. 
Davis, proprietor of the Mount Crawford House. 
About sixteen miles long, it leaves the Saco meadows 
near the present Bemis Station, passes up between 
Mounts Crawford and Resolution, ascends the 
Giant's Stairs on the southwest side, runs along the 
Montalban Ridge to Boott Spur, and finally crosses 
Bigelow's Lawn to the Crawford Path. Much of 
the course of the Davis Path being not particularly 
interesting and its length being so great, it did not 
become popular, and so it was abandoned in 1853 
and was for many years actually obliterated for all 
but a very small portion of the way. Professor 
Huntington, however, ascended by it in 1871, and 
W. H. Pickering and W. S. Fenollosa followed its 
route in the main or where possible, in an excursion 
to Mount Washington via Mounts Crawford, Reso- 
lution, Davis, and Isolation in 1880. In August 
and September, 19 10, under the direction of Warren 
W. Hart, Councillor of Improvements of the Appa- 
lachian Mountain Club in that year, this ancient 
path was reopened. 

A path-builder whose name became early con- 
nected with the Glen side of the Mountain, and is 
permanently associated with Tuckerman's Ravine, 

346 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

is the late Major Curtis B. Raymond, of Boston, for 
many years an explorer and ardent lover of the 
Mountains. Major Raymond first visited the Ra- 
vine in 1854. In 1879, he opened the well-known 
Raymond Path, which leaves the carriage road two 
miles up the Mountain and ascends by easy grades 
to the snow arch. This was in the main an old route, 
that of the bridle path which was cut by Landlord 
Thompson, of the Glen House, but which had in 
course of time become more or less obstructed by 
falling trees. From the Raymond Path a side path 
diverges to the celebrated Raymond Cataract, while 
the Appalachian Mountain Club Crystal Cascade 
Path, also opened in 1879, joins it a quarter of a 
mile or so below Hermit Lake. In 1891, Major 
Raymond improved his path, and, after his death in 
February, 1893, his widow maintained the path for 
some years. It was reopened in 1904 and is now an 
A.M.C. path. These two paths with the trail from 
the snow arch to the Summit, laid out by F. H. 
Burt and others in 1881 and now maintained by the 
Club, constitute a continuous route through Tucker- 
man's Ravine to the summit of Mount Washington. 
Benjamin F. Osgood, for many years head porter 
of the Glen House and noted as a guide, has been 
already mentioned in the latter and other connec- 
tions. He was also something of a path-builder, for 
in 1878 he opened a path to Mount Madison from 
a point near the Glen House, and in 1881 built a 
path from Osgood's Falls on the Mount Madison 
path to Spaulding's Lake, or just beyond it, at the 
head of the Great Gulf. The Osgood Path fell into 

347 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

disuse after the burning of the Glen House, but was 
reopened in 1904. In 1907, the Appalachian Moun- 
tain Club relocated its lower end and adopted it as 
an official path. 

The founding of the Appalachian Mountain Club 
in 1876 marks the beginning of a new epoch in the 
exploration, study, and pleasure use of the White 
Mountains, for, although the Club has "taken all 
outdoors for its field," it is to this region that the 
major part of its attention has been directed. In- 
deed, the White Mountains may be regarded as 
peculiarly an A.M.C. preserve. 

Three years before this important event, what is 
believed to be the first organization of the sort ever 
attempted in America was formed In the White 
Mountain Club of Portland, Maine. Its object was, 
however, amusement rather than exploration and 
scientific study. It had been by members of this 
then future club that Carrlgain was early visited 
(only Professor Guyot and party had previously 
been there). Professor George L. Vose and Mr. 
G. F. Morse, with J. O. Cobb for a guide, accom- 
plishing this difficult climb on September 20-21, 
1869. 

On August 29-31, 1873, a second ascent of this 
mountain was made, this time by a party of six 
men from Portland or its vicinity, with two local 
men hired as guides. This Is known in the White 
Mountain Club annals as "the famous Carrlgain 
party," and, indeed, the expedition was a memorable 
one because of an action taken during it. The first 
day was spent — because the guides knew nothing 

348 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

of the country — in futile wandering over the worst 
kind of obstructions. The men were without water, 
and so, when, in the late afternoon, they came 
again upon Carrigain Brook, which they had crossed 
early in the day, they camped for the night. There 
and then the White Mountain Club was founded. 
The next day the ascent of the mountain was 
achieved by the new club. 

The beginnings of the Appalachian Mountain 
Club were on this wise. The project of forming an 
organization " for the advancement of the interests 
of those who visit the mountains of New England 
and adjacent regions, whether for the purpose of 
scientific research or summer recreation," had been 
for some time a subject of discussion among scien- 
tists and others residing in or near Boston who were 
mountain-lovers. The suggestion of such a club 
must date back many years. At length definite 
action looking toward its realization was taken. The 
initiative came from Professor E. C. Pickering, who, 
on January i, 1876, issued fifty cards of invitation 
to a meeting, at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology in Boston, "of those interested in moun- 
tain exploration." Professor Charles E. Fay was 
chairman of this first meeting, held on January 8. 
After three preliminary meetings, the first regular 
meeting was held on February 9, when a permanent 
organization was formed, the original number of 
members being thirty-nine. Professor Pickering, to 
whom unquestionably belongs the honor of found- 
ing the Club, was naturally chosen as its first presi- 
dent. 

349 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

As the interest in the Club grew and the scope 
of its activities became enlarged and more defined, 
it was soon evident that it would be advisable for 
it to have a legal standing, and so early in 1878 a 
corporation was formed to enable the Club to hold 
and defend a legal title to any property of which it 
might become possessed. The number of incor- 
porators was one hundred and fifty, the same name 
was retained, and the objects of the Club were set 
forth as "to explore the mountains of New England 
and the adjacent regions, both for scientific and 
artistic purposes; and, in general, to cultivate an 
interest in geographical studies." The first meeting 
of the corporation was held on March 13, 1878; at 
the eighth corporate meeting, on January 8, 1879, 
a resolution was passed dissolving the "voluntary, 
unincorporated association heretofore known by the 
name of the Appalachian Mountain Club." 

When one comes to pass in review the activities 
of the Club in the White Mountains during the 
years since its founding and to record its services in 
the exploration of the region and in the promotion of 
the pleasure of visitors, and especially of those who 
are fond of mountaineering, one must declare at the 
outset that time would fail him to tell of a tithe of 
the Club's doings and benefactions. In the way of 
commendation of the organization's work, it may 
be said that all who love to follow a trail up and 
over the Mountains, and to live in the open, owe 
to the Appalachian Mountain Club an ever-Increas- 
ing debt for its contributions to the opportunities 
and facilities for their enjoyment of the White 

350 




THE MOUNT PLEASANT TRAIL 




A. M. C. HUTS ON MOUNT MADISON 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

Mountains, and will, one and all, wish to utter a 
fervent "Amen" to Dr. Hale's simple benediction, 
"Blessings on the Appalachian Club." 

One will have to be content also with little more 
than a mere enumeration of some of the more im- 
portant of the Club's explorations, path-building 
and other constructive undertakings, and other ac- 
tivities. 

It is the custom of the Club to hold one general 
field meeting in the summer of each year. Most of 
these gatherings have been held in the White Moun- 
tains, a goodly number of them, the first in 1886, at 
the Summit House on Mount Washington. Other 
places of meeting have been the Crawford House, 
the Profile House, North Conway,^ Jefferson, Jack- 
son, Bethlehem, and North Woodstock. 

A winter excursion is now a feature of the Club 
year. The earliest of these was made in 1882, in 
the first days of February. Jackson was the head- 
quarters on this occasion, when a ride through the 
Notch to Fabyan was taken. 

The first important building work ever under- 
taken by the Club is the provision for shelter on the 
Northern Peaks, in the form of a stone cabin or hut 
at the Madison Spring, which is located on the 
south flank of Mount Madison in the depression 
between that peak and Mount Adams. The advis- 
ability and feasibility of having a place of refuge at 
this point having been demonstrated, construction 
was begun in August, 1888, the masons going into 

1 The first field meeting, that of 1876, was held there, ascents being 
made of Kearsarge and Willard 

351 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

camp on the 21st and finishing the walls in about 
three weeks. Then ensued a prolonged spell of ex- 
traordinarily stormy weather, and it was with the 
greatest difficulty that the roof was got on and the 
hut made tight for the winter. As originally con- 
structed, the building's inside dimensions were six- 
teen and one half by twelve and one quarter feet, 
and it was seven feet high at the eaves and eleven 
at the ridge of the roof. The walls are about two feet 
thick and are constructed of fiat stones carefully 
fitted and pointed inside and outside with Portland 
cement. The plans were furnished by J. F. Eaton 
and the original cost was about eight hundred dol- 
lars. The work of construction was completed in 
1889. In 1906, the hut was enlarged by the building 
of a compartment for women. Still further provision 
for the comfort and convenience of pedestrians was 
made by the erection of a second building in 191 1, 
which was opened for use in 1912. This "hut" con- 
tains two rooms, one a living-room for the caretaker 
and the other a kitchen and dining-room in which 
to prepare and serve meals to the guests. 

Continuing its policy of promoting the interests 
of those vacationists who prefer to tramp, and es- 
pecially of improving existing facilities for their 
convenience and protection while on an extended 
trip, the Club, in 1914, replaced with a stone hut 
its log cabin in the Carter Notch, which building 
had served as a shelter in that region for ten years, 
but which had proved unsatisfactory in location and 
in several other ways. For this new camp in this 
deep wild cleft in the Carter-Moriah Range, which 

352 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

lies east of the Presidential Range, a better situation 
than that of the old cabin was chosen. The latter 
was close under the western slope of Carter Dome, 
but the new structure is in an open place beside the 
southern one of the two beautiful tarns in the mid- 
dle of the Notch and commands a pleasant outlook 
down the Wildcat Valley toward Jackson. This, the 
third of the Club's stone huts, has accommodations 
for thirty-six persons, with separate heated rooms 
for men and women. 

The most recent building enterprise of the Club 
is the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, which was con- 
structed in the early summer of 1915 and opened to 
the use of the mountain-climbing fraternity in Au- 
gust. It is located on a little terrace on the Mount 
Monroe side of the larger of the two lakelets from 
which it gets its name, faces the south, from which 
direction the bridle path approaches it, and, al- 
though not situated directly on the path, is only a 
few rods from it. In planning the kind of structure 
to be erected at this situation, which, unlike those 
of the other A.M.C. huts, is in a place from which 
it is a long, and in violent weather a dangerous, way 
to the protecting timber of lower levels, it was 
thought advisable to depart somewhat from the 
type of hut previously built and to construct one 
in which the tramper — who, if caught at this point 
in a storm, must perforce wait it out there — would 
be able to pass a more comfortable time than is 
possible in the older kind of hut, with its low walls 
and few and narrow windows. So the new hut was 
provided with somewhat higher stone walls, — it is 

353 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

not, like the first Madison Hut, built into the side 
of the mountain, — and, as a special constructive 
feature, with several large plate-glass windows, 
consisting not, however, of single panes, but of 
large lights set in steel frames. In the lighter and 
otherwise more attractive interior thus made pos- 
sible, a person imprisoned during a driving tempest 
would have a rather pleasant experience, being able 
not only to stay there in comparative comfort, but 
also to watch the antics of the storm; while in 
clear weather, if it happened to be too cool or too 
windy to remain outside with pleasure, a sojourner 
at this camp would find it far from disagreeable 
to sit within and view the prospect down the Am- 
monoosuc ravine and away to the distance. Accom- 
modations, not luxurious but comfortable, are 
provided for twelve women and twenty-four men. 

A new convenience for mountain-climbers, intro- 
duced in 191 5, was the establishment of wireless 
telegraph service at the Madison, Lakes of the 
Clouds, and Carter Notch Huts, radio outfits being 
installed at each, so that thereby intending visitors 
might be enabled to reserve accommodations from 
hut to hut or from the world below by telephoning 
to the Madison Hut. 

Other shelters of a less permanent character have 
been built by the Club in various parts of the Moun- 
tains, as, near Hermit Lake in Tuckerman's Ravine, 
on the Crawford Path,^ and on Mount Liberty in 

^ The shelter on this trail was built in 1901, as has been stated in 
connection with the recital of the story of the perishing of Curtis and 
Ormsbee. In 1915, on the erection of the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, 

354 




A. M. C. HUT ON MOUNT MONROE 




MOUNT MONROE HUT INTERIOR 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

the Franconla Range ; and it is one of the ambitions 
of this benevolent organization to establish a chain 
of huts and camps throughout the Mountains as one 
of its agencies for achieving its purpose of cultivat- 
ing the tramping habit and the love of woods and 
mountains. 

On the Northern Peaks are a number of privately 
built camps, such as the Log Cabin, constructed by 
William G. Nowell in 1890, and the Cascade and 
Perch Camps, built in 1892-93 by the late Professor 
Edmands, of Harvard Observatory, a member of 
the Appalachian Club, who at his own expense con- 
structed also many miles of paths on the Presiden- 
tial Range, including the Gulfside Trail, the Ran- 
dolph Path, the Israel Ridge Path, the Edmands 
Path from between Mounts Franklin and Pleasant 
down the side of the latter, and the Westside Trail. 

These paths and many others are now maintained 
by the Club. Not a few have been newly constructed 
and a number of older ones have been reopened. 
The work of path-making was almost immediately 
taken up by the Club after its organization and has 
since been a very important feature of its work. In 
1876 and afterward, Lowe's Path up Mount Adams 
was improved, and in that and the following year, 
the Jackson-Carter Notch Path, another Club path, 
was built by Jonathan G. Davis. A Club path to 
Tuckerman's Ravine from the Crystal Cascade was, 
as we have seen, opened in 1879. In 1878 and 1894, 
paths were opened along Snyder Brook on the side 

it was removed to a point, about half a mile farther north, where the 
Boott Spur Trail meets the Crawford Path. 

355 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

of Mount Madison, sections of which paths were 
incorporated in the graded Valley Way from Appa- 
lachia Station to the Madison Hut, a path built by 
Professor Edmands in 1895-97. In 1882, a trail was 
built by the Club over the Twin Mountain Range. 
The Air Line Path up Durand Ridge to Mount 
Adams was built as to its lower part by Messrs. W. H. 
Peek, E. B. Cook, and L. M. Watson, in 1883-84, 
and in the latter year a trail to the Castellated Ridge 
on Mount Jefferson was made under the direction of 
William G. Nowell. The old Fabyan (originally 
Crawford) Path to Mount Pleasant was reopened 
by the Club in 1886, but, being little used, it soon 
became overgrown again. ^ A path up Mount Gar- 
field^ in the Franconia Range was opened in 1897. 
The Boott Spur Trail, which utilizes a mile of the old 
Davis Trail before it joins the Crawford Trail, dates 
from 1900. Six years later, the Glen Boulder Trail 
was opened to the summit of Mount Washington. 

Club paths are now to be found over the entire 
Mountain region. There are, for instance, trails up 
Mount Moosilauke and a path ascending the Fran- 
conia Range from the south through the Flume. 
The Club is now devoting its attention to the per- 
fecting of an organic system of main through-route 
paths, by which it will be possible to traverse nearly 
all the principal ranges and valleys from end to end 
and to cross from one valley to another. 

^ In 1900, this path was again reopened, this time by Mr. Anderson, 
of the Mount Pleasant House, and Professor Edmands, who had it 
cleared and improved. A new road was made then to the foot of the 
mountain. 

^ So named in 1881, at the suggestion of Frances E. Willard. 

356 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

Reservations are owned by the Club In various 
parts of the Mountains, notably at North Wood- 
stock, Appalachia, Shelburne, the Glen ElHs Falls, 
and the Crystal Cascade. 

Another undertaking of the Club is the mainte- 
nance on most of the less-frequented summits of 
copper cylinders containing paper and pencil, for 
recording ascents and the names of the climbers. 
This was a systemization of a matter hitherto left to 
individual initiative and only sporadically attended 
to. As it may be of some interest to the reader to 
have set before him the circumstances connected 
with the previous attempts of this nature alluded to, 
a brief narration of them may therefore be pardon- 
ably interjected here. 

Mention was made in the early pages of this 
chronicle of one or two cases in which visitors to the 
top of Mount Washington left on the Summit a 
record of their achievement in mountaineering.^ In 
1824, Ethan Allen Crawford attempted to make 
provision for those who wished to leave their names, 
carrying up a thin piece of sheet lead, eight or ten 
feet in length and seven inches wide, which was put 
round a roller he made for the purpose. He also 
made an iron pencil for use on the lead, by which 
means he thought visitors could much more quickly 
and easily register their names "than they could 
carve them with a chisel and hammer on a rock," 
The party of vandals from Jackson, already spoken 
of as carrying off the brass plate placed on the 

^ See the accounts of the expeditions of Belknap's party (p. 31); 
of Brazer and Dawson (p. 84); and of Dr. Bigelow (p. 37). 

357 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Mountain In 1818, also took away at the same time 
(1825) Mr. Crawford's sheet of lead, which is said 
to have been run into musket balls. 

The next placing of a register on a White Moun- 
tain summit is credited to the famous guide, Benja- 
min F. Osgood, who on August 12, 1854, placed a 
roll, probably in a bottle, on Mount Adams. By 
1866, it contained twelve names, it is said, and ten 
years later twenty. Lastly, L. L. Holden, of the 
Boston Journal, in his account, in "Mount Washing- 
ton in Winter," of the excursion of Mr. Nelson and 
himself to Mount Adams on the 6th of May, 1871, 
tells of their inscribing their names "upon an old 
sardine box which had evidently served as a sort of 
visitors' register for nearly a dozen years." 

The Appalachian Mountain Club took up this 
matter of providing means for registration of ascents 
in the first summer of its existence, William G. 
Nowell placing a Club bottle on the summit of 
Mount Adams on July 22, 1876, as the roll placed 
in this receptacle records. On August 23 of the next 
year, the bottle was replaced by an A.M.C. cylinder. 
The successive rolls on Mount Adams are in good 
order and form a continuous, or nearly continuous, 
record. Their history is marked, however, by one 
noteworthy occurrence, for in June, 1894, the cylin- 
der was struck by lightning and destroyed. It was 
promptly replaced. On the new roll of that year, it 
is recorded that a small party suffered to some extent 
from the shock of that stroke. The year 1876 appears 
to be the date that Mount Madison first received a 
register. 

358 



TRAILS AND PATH-BUILDERS 

The last of the Club's activities I shall mention in 
this fragmentary and, considering the merit of its 
achievements, far from commensurate, account of 
them, is one of the most important. This is its 
means of disseminating among its members and to 
the world in general the information, scientific and 
other, acquired by explorations, the reports of the 
various departments of the Club work, and the like. 
The Club's journal, Appalachia, was established 
immediately after the Club's founding in 1876, and 
the first number appeared in June of that year. The 
idea of publishing papers by members of the Club 
in an official periodical was conceived by the ento- 
mologist, Samuel H. Scudder, the Club's first vice- 
president and second president. He determined the 
form and character of the magazine, gave it its 
euphonious and now widely known name, and was 
its first editor. As a large part of the contents of the 
journal relates to the White Mountains, the volumes 
constitute a scientific and topographical record of 
them of inestimable value. 



XVII 

THE GREAT FIRE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON — 
OTHER RECENT EVENTS OF INTEREST 

Aside from the establishment of the White Moun- 
tain National Forest, to be dealt with in the next 
chapter, the most notable event in recent White 
Mountain history is an occurrence which has already 
been several times mentioned incidentally, the great 
fire of the night of Thursday, June i8, 1908, by 
which the active portion of the settlement on New 
England's highest point was in a few hours wiped 
out and the Summit thrown back to the primitive 
conditions of half a century before. This most dis- 
astrous conflagration not only was a serious set- 
back to the business interests concerned, — a repa- 
rable injury, — but, by its removal of a number of 
ancient landmarks about which were clustered mem- 
ories and associations of many a sort, it occasioned 
a sentimental loss which cannot be recovered. For 
it was with genuine sorrow that the news of the fire 
came to thousands throughout this country and in 
distant lands, and particularly was the destruction 
of the hotel lamented by those who as permanent 
summer guests had enjoyed the hospitality and 
shelter of the Summit House, and by those whose 
occupations were in connection with the enterprises 
conducted on the Summit. 

Many had been the pleasant gatherings around 
the office stove enjoyed by the little Summit colony 

360 



FIRE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 

or "family," as they called themselves. To them, 
such was their attachment to their summer home, 
the passing of the old structure was like the loss 
of a dear human friend. Wrote Annie Trumbull 
c)losson, a regular sojourner at the Summit: "I 
know . . . that no new hostelry . . . will ever be to 
us, the little band of habitues, of annual dwellers 
therein, of devoted pilgrims seeking each summer a 
loved shrine, just the same as the dear old Summit 
House. Of late years it had been my home, my 
homiest home. . . . Dear old house! I loved every 
timber, every clapboard of it." 

As a spectacle the fire, involving so many build- 
ings situated at such an elevation, and occurring, as 
it did, in the early evening of a clear day, was natu- 
rally a brilliant and far viewable one. As in addition 
to these circumstances the fire was early discovered 
and the news of it soon communicated to the Moun- 
tain towns and villages, many inhabitants of the 
localities from which Mount Washington is visible 
were enabled to witness this unforgettable sight and 
even to watch the conflagration's progress. 

There is a dramatic element, too, in the time of 
year of the fire's occurrence, for it was while prepa- 
rations were going actively forward for the summer. 
For several days previous to that calamitous Thurs- 
day, the railway men had been employed during the 
day in putting things in readiness. The section of 
track along the platform had just been recon- 
structed, the following Sunday the manager and 
other employees of the hotel were due to arrive, and 
the opening was set for the 29th. 

361 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

On the fateful day, work had been done under the 
direction of Superintendent John Home in making 
the Summit House habitable for the summer. Be- 
tween 4.30 and 5 P.M. the employees' train left for 
the Base, but before its departure a party of young 
people from Berlin arrived, who had come over the 
Range from the Madison Hut and were intending to 
pass the night in the stage office. Everything was 
apparently right when the railway employees de- 
parted. 

It had been a beautiful day, and there was a bril- 
liant sunset. After the sun had gone down, the light 
still lingered on the peaks, as it was nearly the long- 
est day of the year. No one thought of any disaster 
being about to happen. The railway men had set- 
tled themselves for a quiet evening's rest; others 
were enjoying the beauty of the evening sky. 

It was at the Fabyan House, probably, that the 
first discovery of the fire from below was made. A 
number of persons connected with the hotel, or 
staying there, as they came out from supper caught 
sight of a glow on the Summit House. The book- 
keeper of the hotel, who first saw it, called to his 
friends to come to see the "pretty sight." One of 
the latter, the clerk, soon detected a suspicious 
flickering of the light and so hurriedly summoned 
Colonel Barron, who was at the cottage, by tele- 
phone. At first the latter thought it was the reflec- 
tion of the sunlight, but soon an outburst of flame 
revealed the light's true nature, and an alarm was 
at once telephoned to the Base, where, such is the 
station's position in relation to the Summit, no sign 

362 



FIRE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 

of the fire had been discovered. Immediately a 
train was made ready and a force of employees under 
Superintendent Home started for the Summit. Not 
until the Gulf Tank was reached were the flames 
visible from the train. As the top was approached, 
it could be seen that the hotel was already a mass of 
flames and that it would be impossible to run the 
train to the platform. So a stop was made a short 
distance below the water tank, and the remainder of 
the way was made on foot. When the men arrived, 
the roof of the Summit House had already gone, the 
fire was working its way to the cottage, the stage 
office had fallen in, the home of Among the Clouds 
was ablaze, and the train-shed had been completely 
destroyed. The walk leading to the Tip-Top House 
was at once cut away, as the fire had begun to creep 
along it, but this precaution proved unnecessary, as 
the high wind kept the flames from traveling farther 
in that direction. Soon the Signal Station caught 
from the fire in the ruins of the train-shed, and the 
crest of the peak was an unbroken line of flame. 
Nothing could be done to stay the work of destruc- 
tion, and the powerless men could only watch the 
progress of the flames and think of what it meant. 
When the fire was seen at the Glen House, the 
housekeeper immediately telephoned to the office at 
Gorham of the E. Libby & Sons Company, the firm 
which controls the carriage road, and to the Halfway 
House. The superintendent of the road, George C. 
Baird, at once prepared to start for the Summit In a 
wagon. Before he left, four boys of the Berlin party 
arrived, having hurried down to give the alarm. 

363 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Near the five-mile post the remainder of the party 
were met, one of whom, a teacher, said the flames 
had first been seen breaking from a window in the 
corner of the hotel nearest the printing-office. Some 
of them had entered to try to put out the fire, but it 
had gained such headway that they were unsuccess- 
ful. They also tried to telephone, not knowing that 
the telephone had been disconnected. Superintend- 
ent Baird reached the Summit in time to see the fire 
at its height. 

Before midnight the fire had burned itself out and 
the Crown of New England was covered with a deso- 
late heap of embers and ashes, charred timbers, and 
ruined metal work, the Tip-Top House alone of all 
the Summit buildings being left to watch over this 
sad scene of devastation. 

The buildings destroyed have been already named. 
Besides the Tip-Top House, the flames also spared 
the two stables, a few hundred feet below the Sum- 
mit. The high wind was the means of saving the 
upper stable, as the gusts blew off the blazing pieces 
of wood which fell on the roof of that building before 
they had time to do more than scorch the shingles. 

The destruction of all but one of the buildings 
made a great alteration in the sky-line of the top of 
Mount Washington as seen from below, restoring it 
nearly to the appearance it had about 1855. The 
tall chimney of the hotel, however, which remained 
standing for some time, stood out like a monument 
and was a striking object from all the country round. 

Plans for rebuilding the hotel were at once talked 
of, and it was at first thought that by extraordinary 

364 




THE FIKE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON AS SEEN FROM GORHAM 



FIRE ON MOUNT WASHINGTON 

efforts a new hotel might be ready for use by the 
first of August. When, however, it was remembered 
that it took two years to build the destroyed hotel 
and two hundred and fifty trains to carry up the 
material, and that on account of the exposed position 
and the uncertain weather conditions work on the 
mountain-top was both difficult and dangerous, it 
was seen that reconstruction would have to proceed 
slowly. 

Meanwhile, the only thing to do was to restore 
the Tip-Top House to its original use as a hotel, and, 
accordingly, steps were at once taken to that end. 
The railway ties and supporting timbers, which had 
been burned, and the rails, which had been twisted 
out of shape, were replaced by almost superhuman 
efforts as soon as the 29th day of June, so that the 
first regular passenger train made its trip on that 
day, according to schedule. The repairs on the Tip- 
Top House were also hastened along. The old parti- 
tions, floors, and sheathing were taken out and re- 
placed by new material, the windows were again 
exposed to daylight, and the observatory room at 
the back was fitted up as a kitchen. Soon the old 
house, unused as a hotel for an interval of thirty-five 
years, was, under the conduct of the staff of the 
Summit House, entertaining visitors in the plain but 
cheerful and comfortable manner of a half-century 
before. 

And such were the conditions of hospitality that 
obtained on Mount Washington for seven years 
after the fire ; for, although plans were made for the 
early erection of a new wooden hotel on the Summit, 

365 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

and, on the 27th of July, 1910, the cornerstone was 
laid and work begun on the foundation of a building 
on the Summit House site, no new building crowned 
Mount Washington until the summer of 191 5. 

The foundation just mentioned was completed, 
but further work was not carried on, as the adoption 
of more elaborate plans, which provided for the 
erection of a massive Summit House of stone, con- 
crete, steel, and glass, whose center should be on 
the very apex of the peak, and for the building of 
a scenic electric railway, twenty miles long, up 
Mount Washington, were about that time decided 
upon by the railroads interested. But the depression 
in business in New England and the failure of the 
project for combining the two principal railroads of 
this section into one system prevented the consum- 
mation of the plans, and the undertaking, which, on 
any such scale as here outlined, would seem to have 
been, even under the most favorable conditions, a 
chimerical one, was abandoned. The surveys, how- 
ever, were made and the lines of the proposed build- 
ing staked out. The survey, also, of the railroad, 
which was laid out to circle the Mountain several 
times in ascending it, was begun on July 4, 191 1, and 
was completed in October, 1912.^ 

^ The roadbed was to be constructed of rock and the grade was to 
be uniformly six per cent. The cost was estimated to be upwards of 
a miUion dollars, and the time required for construction about two 
years. The route starts at the Base Station, goes up Mount Jefferson 
to the very edge of the Castellated Ridge, crosses the west slopes of 
Jefferson and Clay, and winds around the cone of Mount Washington 
two and a half times, passing close to the head wall of Tuckerman's 
Ravine, Boott Spur, and the Lakes of the Clouds. The necessary per- 
mission for building the road and appurtenances was granted to the 

366 



OTHER EVENTS OF INTEREST 

The year 1915 was rendered a memorable year in 
the annals of Mount Washington by two events, 
the construction and opening of a new Summit hotel 
and the occurrence of another fire, by which an 
ancient landmark was for the most part destroyed. 

After the abandonment of the project, just out- 
lined, of building a scenic railway up the Mountain 
and a very costly hotel on the Summit, nothing was 
done for a year or so about constructing a new 
house there. But the idea of having some kind of 
shelter for visitors more commodious and comfort- 
able than was furnished by the old Tip-Top House 
was not given up by the persons most concerned in 
the matter, the officials of the Concord and Mont- 
real Railroad Company, which controls the Mount 
Washington Railway. At length it was decided to 
build a modest structure, using the accumulated 
profits of the little road to pay for it, and plans 
for a new building on this basis were completed 
in the autumn of 1914. 

As most of the people who come to the Summit 
remain but a few hours, it was thought advisable in 
designing the interior to adapt it to serve principally 
as a station and restaurant, but the provision of 
comfortable accommodations for those visitors who 
desire to spend a night in order to witness the im- 
pressive sunset and sunrise, or who wish to remain 
for a longer time, was by no means disregarded. 

Last summer saw the materialization of these 

Concord and Montreal Railroad by the New Hampshire Board of 
Public Service Commissioners in July, 1912. One result of the survey 
is the most accurate map ever made of Washington, Clay, and 
Jefferson. 

367 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

plans, and Mount Washington is now again crowned 
with a Summit House, and one equal in appoint- 
ments and in comfort to any mountain-top hotel in 
the world. The new house, which is one hundred and 
sixty-eight feet long, thirty-eight feet wide, and 
one and one-half stories in height, is constructed of 
wood, has its outside walls shingled, and rests upon 
the foundation already mentioned as having been 
completed some years ago upon the site of its pred- 
ecessor. The building was framed at Lisbon during 
the winter and the frame was hauled to the Base 
in the early spring. Work was commenced on the 
Summit on May lo, about twenty men, who boarded 
in the Tip-Top House, being employed. Although 
the workmen had to contend in May with snow, 
frost, terrific winds, clouds, and rain, which rendered 
it impossible to work at all on some days, and with 
more or less bad weather later, good progress was 
made and the hotel was completed in time to be 
opened about a month before the close of the 
season. 

To avoid having to resort to the usual practice of 
anchoring the building to the Mountain with stout 
chains in order to hold it on its foundation, the sills 
of this substantial structure are sunk in the solid 
concrete and then secured with heavy iron bolts, 
each post is fastened to the sills with wrought-iron 
straps, and the second half-story is similarly bound 
to the first-floor plates. 

The main floor is given up mostly to the office, 
restaurant, and other public rooms, while the guest- 
rooms and employees' rooms are on the floor above. 

368 



OTHER EVENTS OF INTEREST 

The hotel is heated with steam, Hghted with elec- 
tricity, and supplied with water from the Lakes of 
the Clouds, which is pumped from the Base into 
a large tank located on the highest point of the 
Summit. 

The opening of the new house took place on 
August 21, in the presence of prominent railroad 
officials, various members of the Appalachian Moun- 
tain Club, many residents of the Mountain towns, 
and others. Among the special features of this cele- 
bration, which was such an event as Mount Wash- 
ington had never seen before, was a flag-raising, a 
dinner, an address on "The Old Times and the 
New," by Rev. Dr. Harry P. Nichols, to whom was 
given the honor of being the first to register, and 
an illumination by means of rockets of many colors 
and red lights, for which latter railroad fusees were 
used. This display, which began at 9 p.m. and lasted 
for half an hour, was given a spectacular finish by 
the descent of the railroad in three minutes by the 
veteran roadmaster Patrick Camden on a slide- 
board, carrying gleaming red lights. He was fol- 
lowed by the train similarly illuminated, and the 
final note was struck by the firing of a dynamite 
salute at the Glen House. Unfortunately, clouds 
prevented the illumination of the Summit being 
seen at distant points, and the success of the idea of 
lighting up various Mountain peaks with bonfires 
in honor of the event. 

The New Summit House had been opened but a 
week, when Mount Washington was the scene of 
another spectacular event, the burning of the famous 

369 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

old Tip-Top House, which very nearly involved its 
sister building in its own fate. Providentially, the 
wind during the fire was from the northeast and so 
carried the flames directly away from the new build- 
ing, which otherwise would not have been spared. 

The blaze was discovered at seven o'clock on 
Sunday morning, August 29, and in an hour's time 
the roof and other woodwork were entirely con- 
sumed, and only the stone walls, which did not 
crumble at all, were left standing. The fire, which 
is supposed to have been caused by a defective 
chimney, was fed by quantities of paint and oil 
stored in the building, and spread so rapidly that 
the occupants, a cook and four carpenters employed 
on the Summit House, were not able to save many 
of their belongings. The only object connected 
with the building that was saved was the old 
weather-beaten sign over the door, which was res- 
cued from the burning structure by a grandson of 
John H. Spaulding, one of the builders and early 
landlords of the ancient hotel. 

The fire was visible for miles around, and ap- 
peared so large that when first seen at the various 
resorts among the Mountains, many feared that 
the new house was burning. The news soon spread 
that it was the old Tip-Top House that was on fire, 
and so thousands of people witnessed from afar the 
spectacular passing of one of the most famous land- 
marks in New England. The destruction of the old 
house so soon after its mission was fulfilled, of afford- 
ing a shelter to visitors during a period when it was 
so much needed, added the last touch of pathos to 

370 



OTHER EVENTS OF INTEREST 

the history of this venerable monument of early- 
enterprise. But the Tip-Top House is not to remain 
a ruin or to disappear from the landscape, for it is 
the announced intention of the railway company to 
restore it so far as possible to its former appearance 
by rebuilding the wooden roof on the old walls. 

The chronicle of events relating to Mount Wash- 
ington would be incomplete without some mention 
of the famous "Climbs to the Clouds" of a few 
years since. The rapid progress in the development 
of the automobile about the beginning of the twen- 
tieth century and the successful construction of 
powerful steam and gasoline vehicles stimulated 
manufacturers and owners to test the hill-climbing 
capabilities of the new mechanical means of trans- 
portation. Naturally the attention of enthusiastic 
motorists was drawn to the Mount Washington 
Carriage Road as furnishing the most difficult piece 
of hill-climbing in the East and thus the finest pos- 
sible test of the quality of a machine in this respect, 
and also the opportunity for making records in a 
new and exciting form of sport. 

Permission having been obtained to make use of 
the road in this way, Mr. and Mrs. F. O. Stanley, 
of Newton, Massachusetts, made on August 31, 1899, 
the first ascent by automobile, the machine being 
a steam one. The first officially timed ascent of the 
Mountain by automobile was made on August 25, 
1903, when the trip took one hour and forty-six 
minutes. The following year, on July 11 and 12, the 
first automobile climbing contest was held. Harry 
S. Harkness made a record of 24 minutes, 37I 

371 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

seconds, and F. E. Stanley one of 28 minutes, iQf 
seconds. 

These records were surpassed in the second 
"CHmb to the Clouds," which took place on July 
17 and 18, 1905. In this contest the best time was 
made by W. M. Hilliard, 20 minutes, 58I seconds. 
Bert Holland in a steam car made the ascent in 22 
minutes, I7| seconds.^ The climb has been made 
on a motor cycle in 20 minutes, 59^^ seconds, Stanley 
T. Kellogg achieving the feat. 

A distinguished visitor to the summit of Mount 
Washington in 1907 was Ambassador James Bryce, 
who, accompanied by Mrs. Bryce, Rev. Dr. Harry 
P. Nichols, and a few others, walked up the Craw- 
ford Bridle Path late in the season. Mr. Bryce (as 
he was then), who is an enthusiastic mountaineer 
and a former president of the English Alpine Club, 
enjoyed greatly the walks and climbs in the neigh- 
borhood of Intervale, where the summer home of 
the British Embassy was established that year. The 
unfavorable weather he was so unfortunate as to 
experience on the Summit did not spoil the enjoy- 
ment of the visit for the genial British gentleman, 
whose delightful personality is most pleasantly re- 
membered by all who were privileged to meet him 
at that time. 

Much interest has been taken in late years in 
Lost River, a small stream in the Kinsman Notch. 
About seven miles west of North Woodstock, this 

^ A related automobile feat may be noted here. This is the record 
climb of Tug-of-War Hill (so-called), the steep ascent from the south 
to the Gate of the Notch, which was achieved in July, 1906, in the 
time of 2 minutes and 48 seconds. 



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'^fll 



LOST RIVER 



OTHER EVENTS OF INTEREST 

mountain brook passes for a distance of about half 
a mile through a remarkable series of glacial caverns, 
which is the third great curiosity in the Franconia 
Mountain region, the Profile and the Flume being 
the other two. In these dark and gloomy caves, 
which are from forty to seventy-five feet deep, the 
water of this mountain brook disappears from sight 
and at times from sound. This unique natural 
wonder, which far surpasses the Flume in its sur- 
prises and its massive rock structure, was discovered 
about 1855 by R. C. Jackman, of North Woodstock. 
About 1875, when he returned to live in North 
Woodstock after an absence of some fifteen years, 
he cut a footpath to the caves, and for a number of 
years he acted as a guide to this and other scenic 
attractions of the region. Fortunately, in 191 2, the 
Society for the Protection of New Hampshire 
Forests acquired a forest reservation of one hun- 
dred and forty-eight acres surrounding and includ- 
ing the caves, the owners generously offering to 
give the land if the Society would buy the standing 
timber on the tract. A legacy and gifts enabled the 
Society to accept the offer, the sum required being 
about seven thousand dollars. Further gifts have 
made it possible to provide bridges, ladders, and 
trails to render the caverns accessible, and to build 
a comfortable shelter for the use of visitors. 

Two important highways built in the early years 
of the present century should receive at least a 
brief mention because of interesting circumstances 
connected with them. One is the John Anderson 
Memorial Road, named in honor of the senior mem- 

373 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ber of the noted former hotel firm of Anderson and 
Price, of Bretton Woods. Mr. Anderson, who was 
the son of General Samuel J. Anderson, of Portland 
and Ogdensburg Railway fame, did much for the 
White Mountains. 

The road came into existence in this way. Desir- 
ing to find a way from Bretton Woods to the Fran- 
conia Notch which would be shorter than the exist- 
ing road via Bethlehem and Franconia Village, and 
which would avoid the long climbs on that route, 
Mr. Anderson, with a party from Bretton Woods, in 
the autumn of 1902, explored the region lying be- 
tween that locality and the Franconia Notch. The 
route for a road was surveyed by R. T. Gile in 
November of that year, and a final location was 
made by him in the summer of the next year. In 
the autumn of 1903, a bridle path was constructed 
under the supervision of the State Engineer and 
opened. In July, 1905, the State began the work 
of developing the bridle path into a highway, which 
was constructed that summer and autumn. After 
Mr. Anderson's death, which occurred at Ormond, 
Florida, in February, 191 1, his name was fittingly 
attached to this new State Road, which runs from 
near Twin Mountain to the Profile Golf Links. 

The other highway, the Jefferson Notch Road, be- 
sides being one of convenience, is because of its 
location one of the grandest drives in the State. 
Rising, as it does, to an elevation of three thousand 
and eleven feet, it commands magnificent views. 
When the construction of this road was agitated, 
the New Hampshire Legislature appropriated six 

374 



OTHER EVENTS OF INTEREST 

thousand dollars for the purpose, on condition that 
the additional expense should be defrayed by pri- 
vate subscription. Toward the needed amount 
several hotel companies, the Boston and Maine 
Railroad Company, and the citizens of Jefferson 
Highlands contributed forty-five hundred dollars. 

The southern division, to which the State High- 
way Commissioners have given the name Mount 
Clinton Road, as much of its course lies along the 
slope of that mountain, was built by Contractor 
Thomas Trudeau, of Pierce Bridge, and was opened 
November 8, 1901. The Commissioners, Messrs. 
John Anderson, C. H. Merrill, and E. A. Crawford 
(the third of the name), were, however, unable to 
find contractors willing to undertake the task of 
constructing the northern or Jefi"erson division. Mr. 
Crawford then came to the rescue and personally 
constructed the road. In carrying the project 
through to a successful conclusion, he had to meet 
many difficulties, which included bad weather, con- 
struction through forest and rock and over the crest 
of a ridge, the holding together of a force of sturdy 
mountain men, and the pledging of his own credit 
for the funds required in the prosecution of the work. 

The first trip over the road was made on August 
9, 1902, when Mr. Crawford drove a three-seated 
buckboard, drawn by two horses and containing six 
other persons, from the Base Station of the Mount 
Washington Railway to his house in Jefferson High- 
lands. The formal opening was held on Tuesday, 
September 9, 1902, when Mr. Crawford drove over 
the road in an eight-horse wagon, in which were 

375 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Governor Chester B. Jordan and his councillors. 
At the summit of the road the party was met by a 
cavalcade from Bretton Woods. After an exchange 
of bugle salutes, a dismounting, a handshaking, and 
general congratulation, the horsemen escorted the 
governor's party to the Mount Washington Hotel, 
then recently opened, where luncheon was had. 
Among the party at the opening was the venerable 
Stephen M. Crawford, son of Ethan Allen Crawford, 
the pioneer. 

This road, so auspiciously opened, was nearly de- 
stroyed by the tremendous downpour of June il 
and 12, 1903, but it was repaired and in July, 1904, 
reopened. 

Of late years the Jefferson division has been usable 
only for horses by fording, as the bridges over two 
streams had not been replaced. After the Legislature 
of 1 9 14 had failed to make an appropriation for 
reopening the road so as to make it passable by auto- 
mobiles, the Bretton Woods Company and a promi- 
nent summer resident of Jefferson Highlands jointly 
undertook to rebuild the road at their own expense. 
In 1915, it was advertised to be open, but the fre- 
quent rains of that summer rendered it rather unsafe 
or at any rate difficult to travel over. 



XVIII 

THE LUMBER INDUSTRY IN THE WHITE MOUN- 
TAINS — THE PERIL OF THE FORESTS — THE 
WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST — OTHER 
RESERVATIONS 

But one other important event, and that one 
which is still in process, remains to be recorded be- 
fore this chronicle shall be completed by having been 
brought down to this present. The event referred 
to is the creation and increment of the White Moun- 
tain National Forest. 

In order to arrive at a proper understanding of 
the circumstances which gradually made evident the 
necessity for action of this sort, it is essential to 
review briefly the history of lumbering in this region 
and to give also some facts relating to the local 
effects of the reckless cutting of the trees practiced 
by settlers and lumbermen, and, further, some in- 
formation regarding the destructive effects here and 
there in the Mountains of that other menace to the 
life of the forest, the forest fire. When this shall 
have been done, I shall rehearse as briefly as I may 
the steps in the rather prolonged process which 
proved necessary to bring about the desired action 
in respect to the White Mountain forest on the part 
of the Federal Government, and shall conclude with 
some brief statements as to the other reservations in 
the region. 

377 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

From the first settlement of the region of northern 
New Hampshire, lumbering has been a leading in- 
dustry there. In the earlier settled towns along the 
coast there was from the beginning a demand for 
building material and ship timber, and so the set- 
tlers in the river valleys among the Mountains soon 
recognized the commercial value of the veteran 
white pines. Moreover, the forests were regarded as 
more or less of an obstruction to agriculture and as 
therefore to be removed as soon and as rapidly as 
possible. The histories of the early days of various 
towns bear witness to the beginning and develop- 
ment of the lumber industry. An account of Shel- 
burne in 1800 speaks of the prodigal use of the best 
trees for the frames of houses and for the making 
of shingles, baskets, chair bottoms, ox bows, etc., 
all the rest of the timber cleared, it is stated, being 
piled and burned on the spot; and the record goes 
on to say : "Logging was always a standard industry, 
and the timber holds out like the widow's meal and 
oil. All the pines went first; nothing else was fit 
for building purposes in those days." The "Craw- 
ford History," in recording the chief facts regarding 
the settlement and growth of Conway touches upon 
the activity of the early inhabitants of that town in 
this direction: "They soon began the lumber busi- 
ness by floating logs and masts down the Saco to 
its mouth, where they received bread stuff and other 
necessaries of life in exchange." 

By the middle of the last century the industry 
had become well established as one of the region's 
principal ones. It is stated that the white pine was 

378 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

then still abundant, although vast quantities of it 
had already been sent to the market, the largest and 
best of such trees being used for the masts of vessels.^ 
Berlin, now become, because of its neighboring for- 
ests and its water power, such an important indus- 
trial center, even then had three large sawmills 
employing each about fifty men, besides several 
small ones. The value of the lumber product in New 
Hampshire multiplied nine times in the last half of 
the nineteenth century and nearly doubled in the 
decade 1890- 1900. 

So vast, however, were formerly the forests in the 
valleys and on the lower slopes of the Mountains 
themselves that the supply of timber seemed inex- 
haustible, and as, therefore, no thought of a possible 
future scarcity ever entered the minds of the early 
lumbermen, no care, naturally, was taken by them 
in cutting off the trees. 

But an important discovery in connection with 
one of the leading manufacturing industries of New 
England was destined to affect very greatly the for- 
ests of the northern region, not only as to quantity 
but also as to kind. Until about 1870 nearly all 
paper was made from rags. Since that time, in the 
making of many cheaper grades of paper, and espe- 
cially that used for newspapers, wood fibers have 
been almost entirely substituted for rags, the fibers 

^ In colonial days it was specially stipulated in the royal grants 
that white and other pine trees, "fit for masting our royal navy," 
were to be carefully preserved for that use, the cutting for any other 
purpose of any tree marked with the broad arrow being, under British 
law, a felony punishable by a heavy fine and involving also forfeiture 
of the rights of the grantee, his heirs and assigns. 

379 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

being transformed Into paper pulp by mechanical 
and chemical processes. What this change has meant 
for the White Mountain forests, with their abun- 
dance of spruce, the chief tree used for the purpose 
of making paper pulp, may be gathered from the 
statement that during the decade between 1890 and 
1900 the growth of the paper and wood-pulp indus- 
try in New Hampshire exceeded that made in any 
other State, the value of the product increasing from 
$1,282,022 in 1889 to $7,244,733 in 1899. This in- 
crease was well maintained in the next census period, 
the value of the product rising in 1909 to $13,994,251, 
an increase of ninety-three per cent over that of 
1899. 

Other wood industries also materially affect the 
forests of northern New Hampshire. These are the 
production of rough bobbins, in which various spe- 
cies of birch, the sugar maple, and the beech are 
used; the manufacture of shoe-pegs, utilizing the 
paper and the yellow birch; the crutch industry, in 
which the wood of the yellow and the paper birch 
and of the sugar maple is employed ; and the manu- 
facture of excelsior, spools, rakes, chairs, veneering, 
ladder rounds, etc. 

The statistical and other information just given 
will furnish some indication of what has been the 
effect of human industry in wood on forest condi- 
tions in this region. Before considering, however, 
the results of this great industrial development, as 
shown in the forests themselves, let us turn our 
attention to the other agency imperiling the tree- 
life of the region. 

380 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

Forest fires of greater or less extent and severity 
have been an accompaniment of lumbering and land- 
clearing from settlement days. But the introduction 
of the steam railroad as a common carrier and as an 
adjunct of the logging industry, and the increase in 
the number of persons who resort to the woods for 
pleasure, have in more recent times greatly increased 
the number and the danger of such fires, and have 
operated to render the fire question one of the first 
importance to forest maintenance. Many of the 
fires that occur run over logged land, but often con- 
siderable areas of virgin forest are destroyed by this 
agency. 

The White Mountain region has, fortunately, not 
been visited by such catastrophic fires as have oc- 
curred in some other regions, but, nevertheless, a 
number of destructive ones have devastated large 
areas. One in the Zealand Valley, in 1888, starting, 
as is supposed, from a burning match dropped by a 
smoker, ran over twelve thousand acres which had 
been lumbered for spruce saw timber, destroying 
the remaining small spruce and the hardwood on 
the tract, together with about two million board 
feet of saw logs. 

Much more extensive and destructive fires oc- 
curred in the spring of 1903, burning over more than 
a tenth of the total White Mountain area and entail- 
ing a loss at the time, to say nothing of the future, 
estimated conservatively at more than two hundred 
thousand dollars. About ten thousand acres of this 
was in a part of the Zealand Valley which escaped 
the fire of 1888. About eighteen thousand acres 

381 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

were burned over in the townships of Kilkenny and 
Berlin in the region to the north of the Pliny and 
Crescent Ranges and in the vicinity of the Pilot 
Range. Another large tract devastated in that year 
was in the upper part of the Wild River Valley in 
the Carter Range region. The Twin Mountain 
Range and the lower slopes of Mounts Garfield and 
Lafayette suffered greatly from a fire, in August, 
1907, which lasted several days and burned over 
about thirty-five thousand acres, mostly of land 
that had been cut over. Much timber was thereby 
consumed and the forest growth retarded for thirty 
years. 

As to the causes of forest fires, it may be confi- 
dently affirmed that the most prolific one is the rail- 
road locomotive, and it is probable that the great 
fires of 1903 in the Mountains may be ascribed to 
this cause. As bearing on this point may be recorded 
the fact that a division superintendent in the White 
Mountain region had in his office, on September 12 
of that year, five hundred and fifty-four separate 
reports of fires causing greater or less damage to 
neighboring property during that year. 

In view of the danger from fire, by far the most 
serious one affecting the White Mountains as a sum- 
mer resort, as the very existence of the region as 
such depends directly upon the protection of the 
forests from this destroyer of landscape beauty, the 
Forest Service of the National Government recom- 
mended, some ten years ago, the adoption of legis- 
lation for the organization of an adequate fire serv- 
ice by the State of New Hampshire. Happily, it 

382 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

can be recorded that the State adopted the recom- 
mendation and now has one of the best fire systems 
in the United States, under the direction of a State 
Forester and with fire wardens and deputy wardens 
in every town. In bringing about this fortunate 
condition the Society for the Protection of New 
Hampshire Forests has played a most important 
part, as it has also in initiating and promoting many 
other movements affecting the forests of the White 
Mountain region. 

Let us return now to a consideration of the lum- 
bering industry and its effects on the White Moun- 
tain forests. By their careless methods of cutting, 
the early settlers and lumbermen removed large 
portions of the virgin forest in the valleys and on 
the lower slopes, which were easy of access, and by 
their selection for lumber purposes of the valuable 
conifers, — the spruce, the white pine, the hemlock, 
and the balsam, of which the primeval forests were 
mostly composed, — they brought about a great 
change in the character of the forests, the hard- 
woods, through being present in mixture with the 
original conifers, and thus causing the growth that 
came up after lumbering to be of their kind, coming 
to be in great preponderance. So comparatively 
small, however, was the ratio, of the amount of tim- 
ber cut to the vast amount of forest in the region, 
and so considerable, even though slow, was the re- 
production, especially of hardwoods, on the cut- 
over land and on land originally cleared for pasture 
and agricultural purposes but subsequently aban- 
doned as unprofitable, that no apprehension of the 

383 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Mountains being some time in the future denuded 
of their forest covering came into the minds of lovers 
of the region in the eariier period of its use and 
growth as a summer vacation land. 

Let me briefly set down also some economic facts 
and conditions which have operated adversely to 
the welfare of the forests. Down to 1867 the State of 
New Hampshire owned the greater part of the White 
Mountain region. The policy of the State being, 
however, to dispose of its public lands as fast as 
possible, large tracts were in consequence sold for 
almost nothing. In the year just named, Governor 
Harriman, acting in pursuance of this policy, was 
induced to part with this domain for the paltry sum 
of twenty-six thousand dollars. A most unfortunate 
sale for the State this proved to be in the light of 
future circumstances. Had the region remained in 
the possession of the Commonwealth there would 
have been saved much expense and time, and much 
anxiety and effort also, in connection with the im- 
portant matter of the preservation of the district's 
forests and of its beauty, which is in such large 
measure dependent upon them. 

The new owners of this rich domain, so lightly 
parted with, were speculators, who cut off as rap- 
idly as they could the mature timber in order to pay 
the taxes and to obtain as much profit as possible. 
At length the increasing scarcity of spruce lumber 
and the tariff on building materials impelled the 
owners, who for the most part had reinained the 
same persons as had originally bought the land, to 
cut the trees below the line of their maturity. These 

384 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

considerations urging to destructive cutting were 
strongly reinforced by the further inducement aris- 
ing from the demands of the wood-pulp industry, 
which operated to cause some owners to cut down 
the spruce, poplar, and birch trees to mere saplings, 
and others to clear off the trees entirely, especially 
in places, such as the higher slopes, where logging is 
difficult. In the former case a quarter of a century 
or more is required to restore the forest; in the lat- 
ter, often fires ran over the denuded area, consum- 
ing not only all vegetation, but also destroying the 
humus and other organic matter in the soil and thus 
causing the land to be lost to forest production. In 
the vicinity of Whitefield, Berlin, and Gorham the 
forests were so cut off by about 1890 as to lay waste 
the country, while in the Zealand Valley reckless 
lumbering and destructive fires had produced at 
that period a condition of extreme desolation over a 
large tract. The aim of the lumbermen in these well- 
known instances of destructive cutting was evidently 
to wrest the last dollar from the land, the pecuniary 
side of the forests being naturally that on which they 
chiefly regarded them. In process of time every val- 
uable timber area was either bought by the large 
lumber and paper companies, or, when still held by 
the original owners, was subject to contracts which 
called for the cutting of the trees under certain 
conditions of stumpage. 

Such being the state of affairs toward the begin- 
ning of the last decade of the nineteenth century, 
persons interested in the White Mountains as a 
summer resort and in the preservation of the region's 

385 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

natural beauties for the use and enjoyment of the 
people, watching the progress of the injudicious and 
often ruinous lumbering operations, began to be 
alarmed for the future of the region and to agitate 
for a change of policy. In the first number (Feb- 
ruary 29, 1888) of Garden and Forest, a quondam 
weekly periodical conducted by Professor Charles 
Sprague Sargent, the historian Parkman had a brief 
article in which he made a plea for the preservation 
of the forests of the White Mountains on the ground 
of their importance as elements of the scenery that 
attracts so many summer visitors. He averred that 
the Mountains owe three fourths of their charm to 
their primeval forests and prophesied that if they 
are robbed of their forests they will become, like 
some parts of the Pyrenees, without interest because 
stripped bare. If proper cutting is practiced, he 
declared, this unfortunate result will be avoided and 
also some droughts and freshets saved. Later in the 
same year the editor advocated the purchase of all 
the forest region by the State or by the railroads, 
and stated that, unless one of these plans or some 
other looking to the permanent safety of the forests 
is adopted, the region and its usefulness would be 
ruined. In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1893, 
Julius H. Ward, author of "The White Mountains" 
(1890), published a more extended article with the 
title, "White Mountain Forests in Peril." In this 
he sounded the note of warning very strongly, tell- 
ing of the wasteful and destructive lumbering, — 
"unwise and barbarous," he characterized it, — 
giving a number of typical instances of the results of 

386 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

such cutting, and asserting that a few lumbermen 
have it in their power "to spoil the whole White 
Mountain region for a period of fifty years, to dry 
up the east branch of the Pemigewasset, to reduce 
the Merrimac to the size of a brook in summer, and 
to bring about a desolation like that which surrounds 
Jerusalem in the Holy Land." The protection and 
preservation of these forests should be regarded as a 
national problem, he declared, the White Mountains 
with their forests being "worth infinitely more for 
the purpose of a great national park than for the 
temporary supply of lumber which they furnish to 
the market." He suggested that if the one or two 
large owners should adopt the regulation, already 
followed by one company, of cutting no tree below 
twelve inches at the butt, they would practically 
settle the whole matter. His idea was that the State 
through a forest commission should purchase from 
the owners of woodland in certain regions an agree- 
ment that they would not cut trees below a certain 
size. 

Other writers took up the advocacy of measures 
to preserve the White Mountain forests, and, aided 
by the establishment of a scientific forestry pro- 
gramme by the National Government and the pop- 
ular interest taken in the subject of conservation, 
an agitation in favor of a forest reservation in the 
region was started, which eventually became nation- 
wide and which was destined after many vexatious 
delays to reach fruition. 

In the first year (1901) of its organization the 
Society for the Protection of New Hampshire For- 

387 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

ests advocated and engaged actively in work for this 
object, and during the whole course of the move- 
ment it has taken a prominent part in furthering it. 
In 1902, a meeting, called by the Reverend Edward 
Everett Hale, was held at Intervale, for the purpose 
of opening a campaign for a national White Moun- 
tain Forest Reserve. Dr. Hale worked early and late 
for this end and it is a matter of regret that his death 
came before his faith became a reality. 

Early in the following year the Legislature of 
New Hampshire passed a bill, approved January 10, 
favoring the proposal to establish a White Moun- 
tain reserve and giving the State's consent to the 
acquisition by purchase, gift, or condemnation 
according to law, of such lands as in the opinion of 
the Federal Government may be needed for the 
purpose. At the same session also was passed a reso- 
lution authorizing and directing the State Forestry 
Commission to procure a general examination of the 
forest lands of the White Mountains by employees 
of the Bureau of Forestry in the Department of 
Agriculture at Washington, the expense not to ex- 
ceed five thousand dollars and the report of the 
investigators to be laid before the next session of the 
General Court. The examination thus provided for 
was begun in May of that year and was carried on 
during the summer months. The printed report,^ 
with its maps and plates, is a comprehensive and 

^ To this report, entitled "Forest Conditions of Northern New 
Hampshire," which was prepared by Alfred K. Chittenden, an assist- 
ant forest inspector, and which was published by the Bureau of For- 
estry of the United States Department of Agriculture in 1905, I am 
much indebted. 

388 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

illuminating survey of the forest conditions of north- 
ern New Hampshire at that time, and their causes. 
It embodied a number of recommendations, most of 
which have since been adopted and put into effect. 
It was suggested, by some of the opponents of the 
proposal to have the National Government purchase 
forest lands in the White Mountains, that the State 
of New Hampshire should herself acquire for a State 
Reservation these lands that she had once practically 
given away. But it was soon realized that it was 
impossible for that small and comparatively poor 
State to follow the lead of large and wealthy States 
such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, 
and, moreover. New Hampshire would have to take 
over a proportionately much larger area than these 
States had done. An alternative suggestion was then 
made, which was that the New England States 
should combine to make the desired purchase, it 
being argued that the rivers that rise within the 
White Mountain region contribute largely to the 
prosperity of all the New England States save one, 
and that New Hampshire ought not to be expected 
to burden herself with debt for the benefit of her 
neighbors. This solution of the problem was not, 
however, seriously regarded as a feasible one, inas- 
much as the neighboring States could not be ex- 
pected to buy lands outside their own borders for 
the creation of a forest reserve over which they 
could have no control, and inasmuch as, further- 
more, concerted action for such an object on the 
part of so many legislatures would be well-nigh an 
impossibility. 

389 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

It was soon patent, therefore, to friends of the 
project of creating a White Mountain reserve that it 
could be brought about only through acquisition of 
the region by the National Government, and, ac- 
cordingly, a vigorous movement was begun looking 
toward the consummation of such a result. After 
years of agitation, carried on in Congress and out of 
it by favorably disposed legislators, societies, news- 
papers, and individuals, in all parts of the East, 
against tremendous opposition on the part of poli- 
ticians and others, success was at length achieved, a 
striking instance of the effect of public opinion when 
widespread and persistent. 

Space cannot be taken to do more than outline 
the successive steps in Congress from the initiation 
of the project there until the legislation was consum- 
mated.^ On November ii, 1903, Senator Hoar, of 
Massachusetts, presented to the Senate resolutions 
of the General Court of his State in favor of enacting 
national legislation to protect the forests of the 
White Mountains. On the loth of the following 
month, Senator Gallinger, of New Hampshire, in- 
troduced a bill calling for the appropriation of not 
more than five million dollars, one million to be 
immediately available, to enable the Secretary of 
Agriculture to purchase land suited to the purpose 
of a national forest reserve in the White Mountains, 
in total extent not to exceed one million acres. This 
bill was referred to the Committee on Forest Reser- 

^ I am indebted, for information as to the course of congressional 
action down to the end of the Sixtieth Congress (March 3, 1909), to 
an article, "The Fight for the Appalachian Forests," by Edwin A. 
Start, in Conservation for May, 1909. 

390 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

vations and the Pro'tection of Game, to which Sen- 
ator Gallinger had, as a member of the Republican 
Committee on Committees, procured the assign- 
ment of his colleague. Senator Burnham. A bill 
was introduced in the House, also, by Representa- 
tive Currier, of New Hampshire. The Senate Com- 
mittee to which the Gallinger bill had been referred 
reported favorably upon it, Senator Burnham's re- 
port, which was the first official notice of the North- 
ern project, discussing clearly all phases of the mat- 
ter and demonstrating strongly the importance, 
commercial and other, of protecting the forests. 
The Fifty-eighth Congress passed into history with- 
out taking any action on the bills, and new ones were 
promptly introduced in the Fifty-ninth Congress. 

So strong, however, was the opposition in Con- 
gress to this largely New England matter, which 
was regarded by many legislators as a sentimental 
project without economic basis, that it was soon 
evident to friends of the measure that it could be 
carried only through combination with the earlier 
and related Southern one for creating a national 
forest reservation in the Southern Appalachians, 
which would thus enlist a much wider support. 

Accordingly, a bill uniting the two projects, which 
had been prepared by a committee appointed by the 
American Forestry Association at its annual meeting 
in January, 1906, to be offered as a substitute for the 
separate measures, and which had been accepted by 
all interested, was immediately laid before the Sen- 
ate Committee on Forest Reservations and the Pro- 
tection of Game. This union bill, which called for an 

391 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

initial appropriation of three million dollars, was 
promptly reported to the Senate by that committee 
in lieu of the two bills already introduced. 

The only accomplishment in this direction, how- 
ever, of the Fifty-ninth Congress, which ended 
March 2, 1907, was the passage of a bill appropriat- 
ing twenty-five thousand dollars for the survey of 
the two regions by the Department of Agriculture. 
This investigation was conducted during that sum- 
mer by the Forest Service, and a valuable report, 
recommending the purchase of five million acres in 
the Southern Appalachians and six hundred thou- 
sand acres in the White Mountains, was made by 
the Secretary of Agriculture to the Sixtieth Con- 
gress. 

When new bills were introduced in the first session 
of the Sixtieth Congress in both Senate and House, 
it was evident that there was a great and growing 
support behind the project, and this fact caused the 
opposition in the House to stiffen and to take an- 
other than the economical tack. A very strong case 
for the measure was presented at a hearing before 
the House Committee on Agriculture in January, 
1908, but the adverse majority in the committee was 
not to be overcome without further struggle. The 
constitutionality of a bill looking to the purchase by 
the National Government of lands within a State 
for forest reserves had early been questioned in the 
House, and it was now decided to refer this aspect 
of the matter to the House Judiciary Committee, 
which action was taken in February. Finally, late in 
April, that tribunal gravely reported that it was its 

392 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

decision that the Federal Government had no power 
to acquire lands within a State solely for forest 
reserves, but could purchase such lands only to 
protect the navigability of rivers, thus resting the 
validity of all such measures upon the Interstate 
Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The pending 
bills, not being thus limited in purpose, were de- 
clared to be unconstitutional. The Senate bill was 
then modified to meet this opinion, and in its new 
form was passed by the Senate in the closing days 
of the session. When received in the House, it was 
referred to the Committee on Agriculture, to the 
majority of which it still proved unacceptable. 

Thus a bill for national forest reserves in the 
Southern Appalachians and in the White Mountains 
had already passed the Senate a number of times 
before the opening of the second session of the 
Sixtieth Congress, in December, 1908, but had not 
been as yet perrriitted to come before the House. 
At length, to meet the objections to the Senate bill 
of the House Committee on Agriculture, on the 
score of its unconstitutionality, a substitute for the 
Senate bill which would be acceptable to a majority 
of the committee, and which, it was hoped, would 
pass the House, was prepared by Representatives 
Weeks, of Massachusetts, and Lever, of South Caro- 
lina, with the assistance of Representative Currier, 
of New Hampshire. This new bill, which was ac- 
cepted by the committee and reported to the House 
in January, 1909, was fittingly given the name of 
Representative (now Senator) John W. Weeks, a 
native of Lancaster, New Hampshire, who worked 

393 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

indefatigably in and out of the House to promote 
the project of a White Mountain reserve, and who, 
fortunately, had been appointed to the Committee 
on Agriculture by Speaker Cannon, in deference to 
the clamor which arose when the Speaker appointed 
Representative Scott, of Kansas, an opponent of the 
project, as chairman, instead of Henry, of Connec- 
ticut, the ranking member. To overcome the ob- 
jection to the appropriation of money mainly for 
the benefit of certain sections and to draw the teeth 
of Representatives who were bitterly opposed to the 
project, the bill was made absolutely general in its 
terms. It provided for the appropriation for the 
current year of one million dollars and for each 
fiscal year thereafter of a sum not to exceed two 
million dollars "for use in the examination, survey, 
and acquirement of lands located on the headwaters 
of navigable streams or those which are being or 
may be developed for navigable purposes," until this 
provision should expire by limitation. No locality 
was mentioned, and the bill therefore applied to the 
whole United States; but, as the headwaters of the 
rivers of the West were already largely protected, it 
was understood that the first purchases were to be 
made in the White Mountains and Southern Appa- 
lachians and the bill was regarded as a bill relating 
to these regions. 

Into the Weeks Bill were incorporated provisions 
from the Scott Bill ^ (one fathered by the chairman 

^ The Scott Bill passed the House and was referred in the Senate 
to the Committee on Commerce, by which it was pigeonholed. It was 
in no way acceptable to the friends of practical Appalachian forest 
legislation. 

394 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

of the House Committee on Agriculture and de- 
signed to sidetrack the measure) permitting States 
to combine for the purpose of conserving the forests 
and the water supply and appropriating one hundred 
thousand dollars to enable the Secretary of Agri- 
culture to cooperate with any State or group of 
States in this object. 

In this form the bill looking to the protection of 
the White Mountain forests eventually passed the 
House on March i, 1909, by a close vote, but it 
failed of consideration in the Senate in the closing 
days of the session. This killed the bill so far as 
that Congress was concerned. 

In the Sixty-first Congress, the Weeks Bill again 
passed the House, June 24, 1910, the day before the 
close of the second session. Finally, in February, 
191 1, during the third session of this Congress, the 
bill passed the Senate and became a law when 
President Taft signed it on March i.^ 

By the Weeks Act, a new doctrine in government 
was asserted, in that Congress decreed that the 
nation had an interest in the headwaters of navi- 
gable streams and might properly spend public 
money in the acquisition and protection of water- 
sheds. Evidently suspicious, however, that there 
was opportunity for fraud. Congress had insured 
efficiency and honesty in the administration of the 

^ The act, as it went on the statute book, appropriated one million 
dollars for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1910, and a sum not exceed- 
ing two million dollars for each fiscal year thereafter, the provisions 
appropriating these sums expiring by limitation on June 30, 1915. 
The first one million dollars was never appropriated because the limit 
of time specified for its use expired before the bill became a law. 

395 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

law by a number of checks, which, while doubtless 
necessary, were not conducive to speedy action. 
The work of considering and passing upon lands 
recommended for purchase and of fixing the prices 
was entrusted by the act to a commission, to be 
known as the National Forest Reservation Com- 
mission, and to consist of three Cabinet officers, two 
members of the Senate, and two members of the 
House. 

At its first meeting the Commission decided to 
spend the entire appropriation in the White Moun- 
tains and the Southern Appalachians. During the 
four months between the passage of the bill and 
the end of the fiscal year, the United States Forest 
Service got quickly to work, secured offers of land 
amounting to about seventy-five thousand acres, 
and completed the examination of thirty-seven 
thousand acres. The Geological Survey, whose re- 
port that the control of the lands offered will pro- 
mote or protect the navigation of streams upon 
whose watersheds they are was by the act a nec- 
essary preliminary, made no report on the White 
Mountain lands until the following year. About 
thirty thousand acres were purchased in the South, 
but the greater part of the two million dollars ap- 
propriated for the fiscal year ending June 30, 191 1, 
reverted, because unused, to the United States 
Treasury. To remedy this loss and to prevent a re- 
currence, an amendment to the Weeks Act was in- 
troduced in the House by Representative Weeks and 
in the Senate by Senator Gallinger, reappropriating 
the three million dollars not used, but intended for 

396 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

use in the original bill and making the whole sum 
available until used. This amendment was accepted 
in part by Congress, the remainder of the allotments 
being rendered available until used. 

At length, the Geological Survey having early in 
1 91 2 rendered a favorable report upon the desira- 
bility of acquiring certain White Mountain forest 
lands that had been offered, for the regulation and 
protection of the streams having their source in 
that region, the first purchase under the law was 
authorized June 16 of that year, when 30,365 acres, 
mostly on the northern slopes of the Presidential 
Range, were accepted. 

Since this beginning of a national forest was made, 
the process of acquiring lands in the White Moun- 
tains has gone on, although more slowly than some 
of its advocates approve, to be sure, because of the 
difficulty of establishing titles and because of the 
extortionate prices demanded by some owners. By 
the middle of 1914, the area purchased amounted 
to 138,572 acres and included some seven thousand 
acres in the Moosilauke region, more than sixteen 
thousand acres on the north slopes of Mounts Gar- 
field and Hale, thirty-one thousand acres on the 
northern Presidential Range and the Dartmouth 
Range, some four thousand acres in the Wild River 
Valley, and more than four thousand acres on 
Wildcat, Spruce, and Iron Mountains. To the great 
delight of lovers of the White Mountains it was an- 
nounced, early in September, 1914, that the Gov- 
ernment and the owners of Mount Washington had 
come to an agreement on the purchase price for it, 

397 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

that the foresters were satisfied with the terms, 
and that the National Forest Reservation Commis- 
sion had approved the purchase and had at the 
same time sanctioned the acquisition of four other 
tracts. The purchase of these areas, aggregating 
85,592 acres, was consummated later in the year and 
the Government holdings were thereby increased 
to 224, 164 acres, acquired at a cost of $1 ,600, 147.50. 
This is about one third of the acreage, 698,086, 
originally laid out for purchase. 

The tract on the Presidential Range includes all 
of the great central peak itself, with its flanks and 
spurs, and six other peaks as well, Clay, Jefferson, 
and Adams of the northern group, and Monroe, 
Franklin, and Pleasant of the southern. Nor is this 
all, for included in this purchase is also that long 
southerly ridge, the Montalban, which extends for 
eight miles from Boott Spur down to the lower end 
of the Crawford Notch at Bartlett. This purchase 
of 33,970 acres is by far the most important one yet 
made by the Government for the White Mountain 
National Forest, both from a sentimental and from 
an economic standpoint, as it comprises the grandest 
part of the Mountain scenery and contains very 
considerable areas of virgin forest and the fountain- 
heads of the Connecticut, Androscoggin, and Saco 
Rivers. 

Of the four other tracts alluded to, one is even 
larger than the area on the Presidential Range just 
spoken of, for it comprises 45,170 acres. This hold- 
ing covers the sides of two distinct mountain ranges 
in the towns of Bartlett and Albany. The other 

398 




THE WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST 



The complete reservation as planned by the National Forest 
Reservation Commission, consisting of about 698,000 acres, is 
shown by the shaded boundary-line. The territory acquired to 
date (1916), amounting to about 272,000 acres, is indicated by 
the full shading. The upper part of Crawford Notch is a State 
Forest Reservation. 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

three include 5615 acres on the side of Mount White- 
face in the Sandwich Range, and two small areas, 
one of 710 acres on the lower slopes of Mount 
Parker in the Montalban Ridge and the other of 127 
acres along the Oliverian Brook in the town of 
Benton, near the western boundary of the purchase 
area. 

During 191 5, further and substantial progress was 
made in the acquisition under the Weeks Act of 
tracts of land for addition to the White Mountain 
National Forest domain, the total area and cost 
being brought up at the end of the year, in round 
numbers, to 272,000 acres and $1,800,000, respec- 
tively. One tract purchased includes some twenty- 
three thousand acres in the Franconia Notch, ex- 
tending south from the land previously acquired at 
Eagle Cliff to a point beyond the lumber village of 
Johnson and containing portions of Mounts La- 
fayette, Liberty, and Flume on the east and Mounts 
Pemigewasset, Kinsman, Jackson, and Cannon on 
the west. Another region acquired is the entire 
watershed of the Zealand River, between the Twin 
Mountain and Rosebrook Ranges. The most im- 
portant acquisition, however, was the last one of 
the year, which comprises all of the Bean Grant, a 
large area adjoining the Crawford House property 
and lying east and northeast of it. Included in its 
confines are portions of Mounts Webster, Clinton, 
Jackson, and Pleasant, of the Presidential Range, 
whose many streams feed two of New England's 
principal rivers, the Saco and the Connecticut, 
while on the lower slopes of the latter three moun- 

399 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

tains stands some of the finest primeval spruce and 
fir forest yet remaining in the whole section. On 
the south this tract borders the New Hampshire 
State Forest in the Crawford Notch, on the west its 
boundary follows the State Road from Crawford's 
along toward the Jefferson Notch and the valley of 
Israel's River, while on the north the area joins the 
earlier purchases on Mount Washington and the 
Northern Peaks. At the close of the year some 
other tracts had been examined for purchase, but 
had not been acquired.^ 

Thus, as the matter now stands, somewhat more 
than one third of the official purchase area has been 
acquired, and an excellent beginning has been made 
in a great conservation project. As, however, the 
appropriations under the Weeks Law (of which, as 
we have seen, about three million dollars, of the 
original eleven million dollars provided for, did not 
become available) ceased with the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1915, it will be necessary, for the carrying 
to completion of the undertaking, that Congress 
should make further appropriations. It is strongly 
held, by those organizations and individuals that 
have been all these years deeply interested in the 
inception and progress of this Government enter- 

^ It is a pleasure to make acknowledgment of my indebtedness for 
information about National Forest acquisitions, etc., to Mr. Allen 
Chamberlain, whose interesting articles on White Mountain National 
Forest and on Appalachian Mountain Club subjects have been espe- 
cially helpful to me in both connections; to Mr. J, St. J. Benedict, 
Supervisor, United States Forest Service, and to Mr. Philip W. Ayres, 
Forester of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, 
who, both in his official capacity and by his own personal interest 
and activity, has done so much for the cause of which he is the official 
representative. 

400 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

prise, that it is of the highest importance that the 
programme of purchases so well begun should be 
continued without interruption, as otherwise a great 
economic loss to the Government will result, not 
only from the failure to acquire valuable timber 
lands and to protect further the mountain water- 
sheds, but from the failure to utilize the existing 
machinery created for the work of acquisition and 
the intimate knowledge of conditions now possessed 
by the force of experts that has been trained. 

The Secretary of Agriculture was, accordingly, 
memorialized by a group of interested organiza- 
tions. North and South, and he has recommended 
the continuation of the appropriations. With his ap- 
proval and that of the Forest Reservation Commis- 
sion, Congress has been asked to appropriate for the 
purpose of carrying out the purposes mentioned in 
the Weeks Act the sum of two million dollars for 
each of the fiscal years ending on the 30th day of 
June, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920, and 1921. 

The State of New Hampshire has done its part. 
Besides the enabling legislation with reference to the 
Federal Government's acquisition of lands within 
the State and the establishment of the splendid 
forest-fire protection system already mentioned, the 
State Legislature, acting under the stimulus of agi- 
tation started by that voluntary organization which 
has done so much for the forestry interests of the 
State, the Society for the Protection of New Hamp- 
shire Forests, passed in 191 1 a bill for the purchase 
of the Crawford Notch, which was in danger of dis- 
figurement from logging operations. The Society 

401 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

proposed the purchase and invited the cooperation 
of commercial bodies, clubs, and individuals in 
furthering the project. The Appalachian Mountain 
Club, many women's clubs, the Boston Chamber of 
Commerce, and a number of newspapers were among 
those actively interested in it. 

Finding that definite information was a necessary 
preliminary to legislative action, the Society carried 
through, at an expense of seven hundred dollars, a 
careful examination and survey of the Notch, and 
prepared a report embodying an account of the 
kind, amount, location, quality, and value of the 
timber, with maps and estimates. 

The bill, as originally introduced, called for an 
appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars, but 
it was amended by the House so as to make the 
appropriation indefinite by empowering the gover- 
nor and council to issue bonds for a sum sufficient 
to acquire the Notch. Through a failure to engross 
the amendment, the bill was signed by the governor 
without it. Discovering after the legislature had 
adjourned that the bill was defective, the governor 
requested a review of it by the supreme court of the 
State and by the attorney-general, which resulted 
in a decision that, although the State was without 
power to issue bonds in the premises, it might, under 
the right of eminent domain, take any lands in the 
Crawford Notch that it could pay for from current 
funds not otherwise appropriated. Under this un- 
fortunate circumstance the State was unable to buy 
the whole of the Notch, but it did purchase in 1912 
the upper and more picturesque part, extending sijf 

402 



LUMBER INDUSTRY AND FORESTS 

miles south from the Crawford House, at a cost of 
sixty-two thousand dollars. Much credit is due to 
Governor Bass and his council for carrying through 
the matter of purchase, despite the defective bill. 

By way of conclusion to this account of the his- 
tory of the National and State Reservation projects 
in the White Mountains, it may be well to bring 
together and summarize the information relating to 
such areas which have been set aside for the use and 
enjoyment of the people in this region, as they ex- 
isted at the end of the year 191 5. The National 
Forest then covered 272,000 acres. The State For- 
estry Commission held some six thousand acres in 
the Crawford Notch, three hundred acres on Bart- 
lett Mountain, one hundred and thirty acres above 
Livermore Falls in Campton, and forty acres in the 
town of Conway, including the Cathedral and White 
Horse Ledges, presented by citizens to the State. 
The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire 
Forests owned one hundred and forty-eight acres 
in the Lost River region and some twenty acres in 
Tam worth, consisting of forested roadside strips 
known as the "Chocorua Pines." The Appalachian 
Mountain Club had many holdings, including the 
following: one acre at the Madison Spring on Mount 
Madison, thirty-six acres along Snyder Brook in 
Randolph, thirty-seven acres at the Lead Mine 
Bridge in Shelburne, the Joseph Story Fay Reserva- 
tion of one hundred and fifty acres in Woodstock 
and Lincoln, ten acres on the summit of South 
Baldface Mountain and ten acres on the summit of 
Mount Kearsarge (Pequawket), both in the town of 

403 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

Chatham, twenty-eight acres at the Glen Ellis Falls, 
and twenty-eight acres at the Crystal Cascade, both 
in the Pinkham Notch region. All honor to those 
organizations and individuals to whose advocacy 
and persistent activity this happy condition of 
things is due! 



XIX 

THE CHANGES IN THE CHARACTER OF WHITE 

MOUNTAIN TRAVEL AND BUSINESS IN 

RECENT YEARS 

The advent of the automobile, with its almost 
immediate leap into general use for touring, greatly 
to the regret of many, including some landlords, has 
largely transformed in character the summer hotel 
and tourist business in the White Mountains, as 
well as elsewhere. While the volume of travel has 
increased, the majority of the visitors to the region 
are now of the transient variety, making in most 
cases but a fleeting stay at any one place and con- 
sisting largely of those who are "doing" the Moun- 
tains in their "motor-car." Many of these make 
only a rapid passage through the region on some of 
the main lines of travel, such as that from Plymouth 
through the Franconia Notch to Bretton Woods, 
and thence on through the Crawford Notch, pausing 
not much longer at various favored stopping-places 
than the time required to consume one of the hos- 
telry's famous meals, or at most to spend a night. 
As a result, some of the capacious and luxurious 
houses of entertainment at strategic points on the 
approved and well-advertised automobile routes are 
now doing a highly profitable business in catering to 
the wants of patrons of this sort. Some tourists 
make their headquarters at a central point and from 

405 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

there tour in their machines to the various points of 
interest about the Mountains, but, even in these 
cases, the length of sojourn is usually comparatively 
short. On the other hand, resorts not on these 
favored routes have suffered in the amount of their 
patronage on account of this change in the purpose 
of the summer visitors, not only because they fail to 
receive their share of these migratory sojourners, but 
because some of their old-time permanent clientele 
are now numbered among that class. The railroads 
serving the region also have suffered a considerable 
loss in the volume of passenger traffic, owing to this 
change from the use of public to that of private 
conveyances, which is somewhat of a reversion in 
type of travel to the conditions of pre-railroad days. 
While, as has been intimated, there are many real 
lovers of the Mountains who regret the passing of 
the old order, with its simplicity and restfulness, 
and its more leisurely ways of seeing the country, 
by walks or delightful drives after two, four, or more 
horses in the old-fashioned mountain-wagons of a 
bygone day, there are others who feel differently 
about it. Writes Ralph D. Paine in Scribner's Maga- 
zine, in describing the pleasures of automobiling in 
the White Hills: — 

In other days many of the finest views of this beautiful 
region were denied the visitor unless he tramped it with a 
pack on his back. Now the hillsides have been blasted and 
the gullies filled to make it no more than a flight of a few 
hours from the Franconia gateway, across the mountains 
and out through Crawford Notch to the highway that 
leads southward through North Conway and Intervale. 

406 



CHANGES IN TRAVEL AND BUSINESS 

Gone is the old simplicity and quiet summer life of 
Fabyan's and Bethlehem and Crawford's, when the same 
guests returned year after year for the same placid exist- 
ence, the young people at tennis and walking tours, their 
elders gossiping in rocking-chairs along the hospitable 
piazzas. Nor is it to regret the passing of the old order of 
things. Where one pilgrim discovered the White Moun- 
tains then, a hundred enjoy them now. The region has 
ceased to be a New England monopoly and is a national 
possession. At Bretton Woods and its vast hotel seventy 
per cent of last summer's [1912's] guests were motorists. 

Whatever may be thought of this opinion in gen- 
eral, and while it is a cause of gratification that many 
more people are enabled to enjoy the Mountains, 
even though they may gain only fleeting glimpses of 
their beauties, it must be said that the statement in 
the first sentence of the quotation is almost as true 
to-day as "in other days." For, owing to the physi- 
cal character of the country, "many of the finest 
views" are still and must be ever reserved for him 
who knows the real "joys of the road," the pedes- 
trian with or without the pack on his back. Nature 
has forever established as impassable to vehicles 
many routes of the region and has placed many of 
its chief attractions in spots inaccessible to any but 
the foot traveler. So the saunterer who keeps off the 
beaten track may still enjoy to the utmost the de- 
lights of the woods, the ravines, and the trails. He 
will always hold in fee simple the right to enjoy not 
only very many of the most charming and of the 
grandest prospects, as has been said, but numbers 
also of the special wonders and beauties of various 
localities. 

407 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

It may well be that when this often mad rush to 
get somewhere and this desire to "do" the White 
Mountains as a part of a motor tour shall have spent 
their novel force, a reaction will set in, and the old- 
time placid sojourn in a particular resort — there 
are still many people who cling to the milder form 
of summer pleasure — will be again in fashion. In 
any case, there is room enough for both classes of 
visitors and each type may, if it will but seek it, find 
a place to its liking. 

Another change in White Mountain business 
which has arisen in late years and which deserves 
notice in this concluding chapter is the development 
of the region as a winter resort. In earlier days few 
urban residents other than hardy members of the 
Appalachian Mountain Club ever thought of ven- 
turing, let alone actually going, into the White Hills 
for a winter pleasure trip. In those bygone days at 
that season the Mountains were almost as deserted 
and solitary as the Himalayas themselves, and even 
the aforesaid pioneers in what was destined to be 
an epoch-making movement in vacationing were 
regarded as overenthusiastic for outdoor life, if not 
more or less foolhardy, in betaking themselves in 
winter to this land of ice and snow, where they might 
be at the mercy of blizzards, avalanches, and other 
terrors, real or supposed, of winter life in high alti- 
tudes. So the Appalachians not only had a monop- 
oly of winter pastiming there, but were often hard 
put to it to find accommodations other than those 
furnished by the Club shelters. Gradually, how- 
ever, the number of the "snowshoe section" of the 

408 



CHANGES IN TRAVEL AND BUSINESS 

Club increased, the newspapers and magazines 
began to take knowledge of these romantic excur- 
sions to the snow-covered solitudes of the Granite 
State, and at length the railroad companies, needing 
only the pioneer work of a widely known outdoor 
organization to build upon, took up the matter of 
providing facilities for such expeditions in a system- 
atic way, and the winter vacation in the north 
country became an accomplished fact. Meanwhile, 
a few of the more enterprising proprietors of White 
Mountain summer hotels discerned the drift of 
things and tried the experiment of keeping open in 
winter also. The new idea that a winter vacation 
could be enjoyed, with the comforts of a modern 
hotel, in cold New England as well as in warm 
Florida or California, immediately found favor 
with the public ; and now, where a decade or so ago, 
there were but three or four hostelries prepared to 
entertain winter guests and few sojourners at that 
season in the White Hills, there are a dozen or 
more hotels catering to the demands of this class of 
patrons, who are numbered by the hundreds. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Abbott, Thomas, 159. 

Abnaki, group of Indians, 2. 

Abnakis, at St. Francis, 9. 

Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
American, 32. 

Adams, Mount, named, 78; Phil- 
lips Brooks on, 135; first path, 
345; Air Line Path, 356; provi- 
sions for records on, 358. 

Adams, Mount John Quincy, 275. 

Adams, town. See Jackson, 59. 

Addey, Markinfield, 254. 

Addison, Daniel Dulany, 182. 

Agamenticus, Mount, 5. 

Agassiz, Alexander, 217. 

Agassiz, Louis, his explorations, 
215; Mount Agassiz, 216; Ag- 
assiz Basins, 216; poem on, 216. 

Agassiz, Mount, named, 216; 
coach overturned, 332. 

Agassiz Basins, 216. 

Agiocochook or Agiochook, xxix; 
legend of origin, 13. 

Aiken, Charles L., 318, 

Aiken, Herrick, 239. 

Aiken, James, 64. 

Aiken, Walter, and the Mount 
Washington Railway, 239; sec- 
ond Summit House, 246; on 
Mount Washington in winter, 
318. 

Air Line Path, 356. 

Albany, town, dying of cattle in, 
13; forest purchase in, 398. 

"Album" of landlord, 107, 146. 

Alden, Reverend Timothy, xxx, 

Aldrich, Eva M., 169. 

Algonquin family of Indians, 2. 

Allen, Dr. A. V. G., 137. 

Allen, Charles, 277. 

Allen, David, 96. 

Allen, Grant, 248. 

Alpine House (Gorham), 170. 

"Ambitious Guest, The," 86, 116. 



American Foresters, Society of, 

its Bibliography, xiv. 
American Forestry Association, 

391- 
American Hay-Fever Association, 

333- 
American Philosophical Society, 

29. 
Ames, Moses, 40. 
Ames's Tavern, 179. 
Amherst, General Jeffrey, 54. 
Amherst College, 120, 208, 310; 

students find Harry Hunter's 

body, 273. 
Ammonoosuc gold field, 209, 210. 
Among the Clouds, xiii, xv; housed 

in old Tip-Top House, 233; 

"newspaper train," 245; office 

built, 251; history, 251-53. 
"Among the Hills," 179. 
Anasagunticooks, the, 2. 
Anchors, made at Tamworth Iron 

Works, 69. 
Anderson, John, 338, 356, 373, 

374. 375- 

Anderson, John Farwell, 227. 

Anderson, General Samuel J., 227. 

Anderson and Price, 338. 

Androscoggin, the, xxxi. 

Aneda, 19. 

Appalachia, founded, 359; first 
editor, 218, 359. 

Appalachian Mountain Club, the. 
Guide, xiii; summit of Mount 
Kearsarge given to, 255; and 
snow arch, 274; shelter on 
Crawford Path, 279, 354; win- 
ter ascents, 305; and various 
paths, 346, 347, 348; founded, 
348, 349; incorporated and vol- 
untary association dissolved, 
350; its work and activities, 
350-57, 358, 359; advocates 
Crawford Notch purchase, 402 ; 



411 



INDEX 



its reservations, 403, 404; win- 
ter expeditions, 408. 

Applebee, Zebedee, 58. 

Apthorp. See Littleton. 

Arosagunticooks, the, 2. 

Art history of White Mountains, 
188. 

Artists' Brook, 199. 

Ascents, registration of, 31, 37, 
84. 357. 358. 

Aspinquid, St., 5. 

Asquamchemauke, 48. 

Atkinson, Theodore, 52. 

Atlantic and St. Lawrence Rail- 
road, 220, 221. 

Atwood, Mrs., 233. 

Auger, screw-, first, 69. 

Austin, the Misses, 79. 

Automobiles, on Mount Washing- 
ton, 371, 372; on Tug-of-War 
Hill, 372; 405-08. 

Avery, James, 57. 

Ayres, Philip W., 400. 

Baedeker, Karl, xiii. 
Baird, George C., 363, 364. 
Baker, Captain, of Newbury, his 

expedition against Pemigewas- 

set Indians, 48. 
Bakers River, 48. 
Balaam, the Indian, 8. 
Baldwin, Loammi, jr., 222. 
Ball, Dr. B. L., 285-301. 
Ball, Dr. S., 300, 301. 
Ballard, Rev. Edward, as to 

meaning of Agiocochook, xxx. 
Ballou, 2d, Dr. Hosea, 128; 

quoted as to hotels existing in 

1845, 165. 
Banks's Hotel, 179. 
Barker, John, at Notch (Willey) 

House, 92, 93. 
Barnes, Dr. H., 301. 
Barnum, P. T., 248. 
Barron, Asa, 335, 337. 
Barron, Colonel Oscar G., 335, 

337; and Mount Washington 

fire, 362. 
Barron, Merrill, and Barron 

(Company), and Summit 

House, 249; firm formed, 335; 
, Mount Pleasant House, 338. 



Barrows, Dr. Nathan, 211. 

Barstow, George, 6. 

Bartlett, early citizens, 52; set- 
tled, 60; forest purchase in, 
398. 

Bartlett, , collegian, 28. 

Bartlett, W. H., 196. 

Base of Mount Washington, the, 
railroad extended to, 225; turn- 
pike to, 238, 241; Among the 
Clouds at, 253. 

Bass, Governor Robert P., 403. 

Bates, Charlotte Fiske, 216. 

Bean, David, 67. 

Bean Grant, 399. 

Bearcamp River House, Whittier 
first comes to, 179; frequents, 
180; burned, 181. 

Beaumont, £lie de, 205, 215. 

Beaver Meadow, 140. 

Beckett, S. B., 120, 121. 

Bedell, A. Judson, 230. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, his con- 
nection with White Mountains, 
127, 131-33. 335; at Crawford 
House, 131, 163; on Mount 
Washington, 248. 

Beede, Daniel, 67. 

Belknap, Jeremy, his History of 
New Hampshire, xxv; quoted, 
XXV, xxvii; Agiocochook, xxix; 
quoted, 2, 3; map, ID, 31 ; Great 
Carbuncle, 15; records ex- 
plorations, 24, 25; quoted, 25; 
on Crawford Notch, 25; tour of 
White Mountains, 2y ff.; unable 
to climb Mount Washington, 
30; battle of Love well's Pond, 
44, 45; motive for visiting 
Mountains, 154. 

Bellows, John, 170. 

Bemis, Dr. Samuel A., his con- 
nection with White Mountains, 
137. 138; and G. N. Franken- 
stein, 203. 

Bemis station, 55, 73, 346. 

Benedict, J. St. J., 400, 

Benjamin, S. G. W., on S. R. 
Gifford's painting, 198; on 
Thomas Hill's painting, 200. 

Bent, Allen H., quoted, ix; his 
bibliography, ix, xiv. 



412 



INDEX 



Berlin, N.H., granted, 59; Lucy 
Larcom at, 183; railroad 
reaches, 226; sawmills at, 379; 
forest fire, 382; destructive 
lumbering, 385. 

Berlin Falls. See Berlin. 

Bernard, Sir Francis, 58. 

Bethel, Maine, Indian raid, 65; 
Lucy Larcom at, 183, 184. 

Bethlehem, President D wight 
visits, 35; granted and settled, 
60; President Dwight on, 61; 
early history, 61 ; Harriet Mar- 
tineau quoted on, 146; first 
taverns, 161 ; Lucy Larcom at, 
184; William Dean Howells at, 
184; Agassiz describes mo- 
raines at, 215; railroad to, 225; 
General Grant at, 243; coach- 
ing parades, 245; White Moun- 
tain Echo, 254; Sir Isaac New- 
ton Gay, 262; development of 
as a resort, 332-34. 

Bierstadt, Albert, 202. 

Bigelow, Dr. Jacob, 31; explores 
White Mountains, 35, 36; his 
account of the Mountains, 37, 

Bigelow's Lawn, 37. 

"Billings, Josh," 341. 

Black flies, Josselyn on, 24. 

Blaikie, William Garden, 248. 

Blanchard, Joseph, 48. 

Boardman, artist, 202. 

Bolles, Frank, natural history, 
218; summer home, 69. 

Bond, Professor G. P., map, 19, 
212. 

Boott, Dr. Francis, with Dr. Big- 
elow, 36; explores the Moun- 
tains again, 37. 

Boott Spur, 22, 31, 36, 37. 

Boott Spur Trail, 356. 

Boston, England, 20. 

Boston and Lowell Railroad, 222. 

Boston and Maine Railroad, 223, 
225, 226, 228, 241, 375. 

Boston Athenaeum, 198. 

Boston, Concord and Montreal 
Railroad reaches Plymouth, 50 ; 
leased to the Boston and Low- 
ell, 50 ; early history, 223, 
224. 



Botany and botanical explora- 
tions, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 108, 
121, 124, 147, 218. 

Boulder in Flume, 303. 

Bourne, George W., 270, 271. 

Bourne, Lizzie C, 269-71. 

Bourne, Lucy, 270, 271. 

Bouton, Nathaniel, 6. 

Bowditch, Dr. Nathaniel, 33. 

Brackett, Adino N., 77, 78. 

Brackett, W. M., 202. 

Bracy, C. F., 317. 

Brass plate placed on Mt. Wash- 
ington, 84. 

Brazer, John, 83. 

Bremer, Fredrika, her visit to 
the White Mountains, 148, 149. 

Bretton Woods, xxviii, 63, 140, 

191. 337. 343. 344- 

Brewster, Edwin Tenney, 206. 

Bridge, W. F., 102. 

Bridle path, Crawford, made, 77. 
See Crawford Path. 

Bridle path, Fabyan, made, 78. 
See also Fabyan Path. 

Briggs, Fire Warden, 282, 283. 

British Embassy at Intervale, 
372. 

"Briton's Woods." See Bretton 
Woods. 

Brooks, Chapin C, 307-09. 

Brooks, Rev. Frederick, 136. 

Brooks, Luke, loi. 

Brooks, Phillips, his connection 
with the White Mountains, 
127. 133-37; on Mount Wash- 
ington, 248. 

Brooks, William G., 134. 

Brown, George Loring, at West 
Campton, 66; at West Ossipee, 
179; at Jackson and Jefferson 
Highlands, 195; his most noted 
White Mountain picture, 195. 

Brown, George T., 168. 

Brown, H. B., 203. 

Browne, George Waldo, 175. 

Bryant, William Cullen, his con« 
nection with the Mountains, 
186-88; impressions of, 
quoted, 187-88. 

Bryce, Ambassador James, 372. 

Buckler, Reginald H., 284. 



413 



INDEX 



Bucknam, Edward, 57. 

Burnham, Denison R., 173. 

Burnham, Senator Henry E., 391. 

Burns, Major, 60. 

Burt, Frank H., his chronology, 
xiii; his Mount Washington, 
xiii; his Among the White 
Mountains, cited, 55; editor of 
Among the Clouds, 252 ; lays out 
path from snow arch to Sum- 
mit, 347. 

Burt, Henry M., 252. 

Burt, Joseph, 61. 

Butterwort Flume, 213. 

Cabot, Sebastian, map, 18. 

Camden, Patrick, 369. 

Camp, Ethan Allen Crawford's, 

destroyed, 98. 
Campbell, friend of Chocorua, 1 1, 

12. 
Campbell and Whittier, 239. 
Campton, grant and settlement, 

65, 66; Whittier at, 178; 

Fieldses at, 178, 183; Lucy Lar- 

com at, 183; artists at, 66, 203. 
Campton Village, 66. 
Cannon, Speaker Joseph G., 248, 

394- 

Cannon, Mount, 102, 104. 

Carriage road on Mount Wash- 
ington, 234-36; 243. 

Carrigain, Mount, 18; Guyot as- 
cends, 217; ascent by Vose and 
Morse, 348; by White Moun- 
tain Club, 348, 349. 

Carrigain, Philip, map, xxxii, 18; 
secretary of state, xxxii, 19; 
ascends Mount Washington, 
78; Mount Lafayette on his 
map, 106. , 

Carroll, 63. 

Carter Dome, 302, 353. 

Carter Notch Hut, 352, 353. 

Cartland, Gertrude W., 181. 

Cartland, Joseph, 181. 

Cascade Camp, 355. 

Casilear, J. W., 196, 197, 199. 

Casola, 103. 

Castellated Ridge, 356. 

Caswell, Captain Nathan, 57. 

Caswell, Apthorp, 57. 



Cavis, C. H. V,, 232, 235. 

Center Sandwich, 68. 

Central Vermont Railroad, 223, 

Century Club, 199. 

Chamberlain, Allen, 400. 

Champlain, Samuel de, 19. 

Champney, Benjamin, at West 
Ossipee, 179; life and work at 
North Conway, 195-99. 

Chandler, Benjamin, 271, 272. 

Chandler, Moses, 255. 

Chandler Ridge, 272. 

Charlestown, N.H., 54. 

Chatauque, 159. 

Cheney, Charles B., 317, 319, 

Cherry Mountain, 26; slide, 304. 

Child, Lydia Maria, Chocorua's 
Curse, II, 12. 

Chisholm's Guide-Book, xiii, 

Chiswick. See Littleton, 61. 

Chittenden, Alfred K., 388. 

Choate, Jonathan, 68. 

Choate, Rufus, 158. 

Chocorua, chieftain, 4, 10; legend 
of, II, 12; Longfellow's poem, 
12, 186; other poems, 12. 

Chocorua, mountain, 10, 67, 179; 
Whittier's opinion of, 180; 
Whittier's and Lucy Larcom's 
humorous poems on climbing, 
181; Thomas Cole and, 191, 
193; A. B. Durand, 195; John 
Williamson, 197; A. D. Shat- 
tuck, 198; J. W. Casilear, 199; 
Daniel Huntington, 201; Wil- 
liam Hart, 203; in second geo- 
logical survey, 210; Peak 
House, 255. 

Chocorua, village, 68. 

Chocorua Lake, 69. 

Chocorua Pines, 403. 

Christall hill or hills. See Crystal 
hill. 

" Christus Judex," 103. 

Church, F. E., 203. 

Church's Falls, 203. 

Civil War, 66, 68. 

Clark, artist, 202. 

Clay, Mrs. C. E., 255. 

Clay, Mount, named, 37. 

Clement, Daniel Q., 257. 

Clement, Ezekiel A., 257. 



414 



INDEX 



Clement, James, 256, 257, 312. 

Cleveland, Grover, at Tamworth, 
69. 

Clif? House, 159. 

"Climbs to the Clouds," 371, 372. 

Clough, A. F., winter on Mount 
Moosilauke, 210, 311-14; win- 
ter on Mount Washington, 316, 
318, 319. 

Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S., 
250. 

Cobb, J. O., 348. 

Coffin, Ira, 168. 

Cogswell, P. B., 318. 

Coke, E. T., quoted, 81; his visit 
to the Mountains, 143-45. 

Cold weather in June, 76. 

Cole, Thomas, painting of death 
of Chocorua, 11, 193; at Jack- 
son, 172; connection with 
Mountains, 190-93. 

Colebrook, 70. 

Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 
248. 

Colman, Samuel, 198. 

Concord, State capital, 61; first 
railroad train, 222. 

Concord. See Lisbon. 

Concord Railroad, 222. 

Concord and Montreal Railroad, 

367. 

Cone, Sergeant O. S. M., 326. 

Connecticut, the, xxxi, 399. 

Connecticut and Passu mpsic 
Rivers Railroad, 223, 226. 

Connecticut River Railroad, 226. 

Conrad, Justus, on Woodstock, 
63; on discovery of the Profile 
and the Flume, 102. 

Conway, Henry Seymour, 50. 

Conway, Indian remains, 3; Bel- 
knap's party at, 29; Bigelow's 
party at, 37; settled, 50; origin 
of name, 50; history, 50^.; 
hotels at, I59#.; and Portland 
and Ogdensburg Railroad, 227; 
Eastern Railroad reaches, 228; 
lumbering at, 378. See also 
North Conway. 

Conway Corner, 159. 

Cook, E. B., 356. 

Cooper, Rev. Charles D., 134. 



Cooper, J. M., 55. 

Coos, Upper, 64; Rosebrook in, 
70. 

Coosucs, the, 2. 

Copp, Benjamin, 59, 

Copp, Joshua, 64. 

Corcoran Gallery of Art, 199. 

Courthouse, first, at Plymouth, 
49. 

"Cow Pasture," 232. 

Cox, Edmund, 243. 

Cram, Captain T. J., ascertains 
height of Mount Washington, 
217. 

Crandall, Governor, 9. 

Crawford, Abel, lives in Nash and 
Sawyer's Location, 72; moves 
to Hart's Location, 72, 73; 
keeps inn there, 73, 158; acts as 
guide, 83, 84, 206; character- 
ized, 84; makes first horseback 
ascent of Mount Washington, 
84, 206; vigorous old age, 85; 
death, 85; and Samuel Willey, 
Jr., 91; effect of storm on his 
property, 97; portrait, 202. 

Crawford, Ethan Allen, autobiog- 
raphy, xiv; on story of Nancy, 
56; cares for grandfather and 
inherits latter 's property, 75; 
physique, 75; burial place, 75; 
soldier, 76; instance of his 
strength, 76; Louisville, New 
York, 76; comes to grandfath- 
er's, 76, 77; house burned, 77, 
157; first path, 77; guide, 77#m 
builds shorter path, 78; stone 
cabins, 79, 229; tent, 229; en- 
larges house, 79, 157; again, 80, 
157; annoyed by neighboring 
landlord, 80, 165; leaves Moun- 
tains and moves to Guildhall, 
82, 163; returns to Mountains, 
82, 166; dies, 83; age, 83; epi- 
taph, 83; Willey disaster, 87; 
date of Willey House, 89; 
storm of August (1826), 92; 
searcher at Willey House, 95; 
effect of storm on his property, 
98; guides Western travelers, 
99; accounts of visitors, 107; 
Chancellor Kent, 107; and bo- 



415 



INDEX 



tanist, 1 08; Hawthorne at his 
house, 115, 116; Emerson there, 
119; Harriet Martineau and, 
145; carries mail, 160; builds 
Notch House, 162; notice of 
painter, 190; makes provision 
for records of ascents, 357. 

Crawford, E. A., 3d, 330, 375. 

Crawford, Lucy Howe, her His- 
tory of the White Mountains, 
xiii, 74; cares for Eleazar Rose- 
brook in his last illness, 75; 
burial place, 83. 

Crawford, Stephen M., 376. 

Crawford, Thomas J., makes 
bridle path, 77; keeps Notch 
House, 85, 162; builds road up 
Mount Willard, 85; guides 
Western travelers, 99, 100; 
names Mount Willard?, 113; 
builds first Crawford House, 
162; and Nazro, 261; and 
Frederick Strickland, 268, 269. 

Crawford, William H., 330. 

Crawford family, in White Moun- 
tain history, 70; work in devel- 
oping Mountain travel, 155, 
156. 

Crawford House, Beecher at, 131 ; 
first one built, 162; burned, 
163; present one built, 163. 

Crawford Notch, known to In- 
dians, 25; made known to colo- 
nists, 25, 26; road, 25, 26, 27; 
turnpike, 27, 73; President 
Dwight, 34, 35; Colonel Whip- 
ple, 52; Rogers's Rangers, 54; 
Nancy, 55, 56; name, 75; Wil- 
ley disaster, 85; turnpike de- 
stroyed and rebuilt, 97; Profes- 
sor Silliman, 108, 109; Haw- 
thorne, 115, 1 16; E. A. Kendall, 
139; Henry Tudor, 141; E. T. 
Coke, 144; traffic through, 156; 
Thomas Cole, 191; Thomas 
Doughty, 194; Benjamin 
Champney, 197; H. B. Brown, 
203; explorations, 213; railroad 
through, 227; State reserve, 
401-03. 

Crawford Notch Hermit, 263. 

Crawford Notch Reserve, 401-03. 

41 



Crawford Path, built, 77; made 
bridle path, 77; shelter, 279, 

354- 
Cruft, Isaac S., 334. 
Crystal Cascade Path, 347, 355. 
Crystal hill or hills, xxv, 19, 20. 
Cummings, G. E., 225. 
Currier, Representative Frank 

D- 391. 393- 
Curtis, WiUiam B., 275-79. 
Cushman, Nathaniel, 62. 
Cutler, Reverend Dr. Manasseh, 

first visit and results, 28, 31, 32; 

second visit, 33; motive, 154. 
Cutler's River, 31. 
Cutter, Louis F., 277. 

Dalton, town, 57. 

Dalton, Honorable Tristram, 57. 

Dana, Professor J. D., 213. 

Danas, the, 47. 

Danforth, Rev. Samuel, .4 /wianoc, 

20. 
Darby Field, the, 283, 284. 
Dartmouth (Jefferson), 29, 31, 52. 
Dartmouth College, 105, 209, 

211, 212, 213. 
Dartmouth Outing Club, 305. 
Davis, D. S., 230. 
Davis, Jefferson, 232. 
Davis, John C, 255. 
Davis, Jonathan G., 355. 
Davis, Nathaniel T. P., keeps 

Mount Crawford House, 73, 

158; loses property, 137. 
Davis Path, 346. 
Dawson, George, 83, 
Deer Park Hotel, 342. 
Deluge tradition, 14. 
Demerit, Eli, 62. 
Demerit, John, 62. 
Dennison, Noyes S., 77. 
Devens, Charles, 248. 
Devil's Den, on Mount Willard, 

described, 218; explored by 

Dartmouth men, 213, 219; by 

F. Leavitt, 219. 
Dinsmore, Andrew, 255. 
Dodge, Harriet D., 249. 
Dodge, Captain John W., 249. 
Dodge, Joseph A., 257. 
Dog, the Willey, 92. 

6 



INDEX 



Dolfinato, Nicolo del, map, 1 8. 

Doughty, Thomas, 190, 194. 

Douglass, William, quoted, xxvi. 

Dover, N.H., Indian attack on, 9. 

Dow, Colonel Stevens M., 257. 

Downes, William Howe, ix. 

Doyle, Private, 323, 324. 

Drake, Samuel Adams, his Heart 
of the White Mountains, xii; 

t quoted on name of Mountains, 
xxvi; on Agiocochook, xxix; on 
Waumbekketmethna, xxx; as to 
train-shed and Private Doyle's 
experiences, 322. 

Dry River, 15, 22. 

Duhring, Mrs., 232. 

Dunstable (Nashua), 42, 43, 46. 

Durand, A. B., at West Camp- 
ton, 66, 203; at Jackson, 172; 
connection with White Moun- 
tains, 194, 195, 196. 

Durand, John, 63. 

Durand, town. See Randolph. 

Durgin, Mr., proprietor of Sinclair 
House, 315. 

Durgin, Mrs. Charles, 330. 

Dwight, Theodore, Jr., on Craw- 
ford Notch road, 27; tour to 
Mountains, no; notices of 
them, no, in; ascent of 
Mount Washington, 112. 

Dwight, President Timothy 
(1752-1817), his Travels in New 
England and New York, xi; on 
visibility of Mount Washing- 
ton, 19; his journeys to the 
White Mountains, 33, 34, 35; 
to Lake Winnepesaukee, 34; 
quoted as to Bethlehem, 61; 
on the character and achieve- 
ments of Eleazar Rosebrook, 
74; his name for Mount La- 
fayette, 106; motive for visit- 
ing Mountains, 154. 

East Branch House, 158. 
Eastern Railroad, 228. 
Eastman, Amos, captured, 49. 
Eastman, Daniel, 159. 
Eastman, Lewis, 198. 
Eastman, Mrs. M. E., 159. 
Eastman, Moses, 161. 



Eastman, Richard, 78. 

Eastman, William, 68. 

Eaton, J. P., 352. 

Echo Lake, David Johnson's pic- 
ture, 197; Sanford R. Gifford's 
picture, 198. 

Edmands, Professor J. Rayner, 
searches for remains of Weiss, 
275; King's Ravine Path, 346; 
builds camps and trails, 355; 
builds Valley Way, 356; opens 
Mount Pleasant Path, 356. 

Edward VH, 195. 

Eliot, John, and Passaconaway, 
6, 8; and Wonnalancet, 9. 

Ellis, George B., 194. 

Ellis, George E., 36. 

Ellis River, 31. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his con- 
nection with the White Moun- 
tains, 118-20; on Thoreau's 
injury, 124. 

Emerton, J. H., scientific work, 
218; on Mount Washington, 
247. 

Emery, , settler, 60, 

Emmons, Charles G., 249. 

English Jack, 263-66. 

Estus, Timothy, 233. 

Evans, Captain, builds road 
through Crawford Notch, 25; 
ascends Mount Washington 
twice, 25, 120; guides Belknap's 
party, 29, 31. 

Evans, David, 40. 

Evans, John, 40. 

Evarts, William M., 248. 

Everett, Edward, 158. 

Fabyan, Abbott L., 338. 

Fabyan, Horace, makes bridle 
path, 78; comes to White 
Mountains, 82, 163; repairs old 
Willey House and builds new 
one, 164; keeps Conway House, 
164; keeps Mount Washington 
House, 164; his tin horn, 164; 
remodels hotel, 165; and Fred- 
erick Strickland, 269; hotel 
called after, 336. 

Fabyan, White Mountains Rail- 
road reaches, 225; Portland and 



417 



INDEX 



Ogdensburg Railroad reaches, 
227; Maine Central Railroad 
extended from, 228; connected 
with Base by turnpike, 238, 
241. 

Fabyan House, 336, 337; Mount 
Washington fire discovered at, 
362. 

Fabyan Path, 78, 356. 

Fairfield. See Woodstock. 

Fall of a Thousand Streams, 121. 

Fassett, F. H., 339. 

Faunce, Sewall E., 273, 274. 

Faxon, Edward, 247. 

Fay, Professor Charles E., 349. 

Fenollosa, W. S., 346. 

Ferrin's Pond, loi. 

Field, Darby, and Crystal Hills, 
xxv; nationality of, 20; resi- 
dence of, 20; explores Moun- 
tains, 20; ascends Mount 
Washington, 20, 21; account of 
riches found, 22. 

Field, General Martin, 103. 

Field meetings of Appalachian 
Mountain Club, 351. 

Field Museum of Natural His- 
tory, 239. 

Fields, Annie, 66, 178. 

Fields, James T., 66, 175, 178. 

Fires, 47, 77, 157, 163, 165, 171, 
172, 173, 174, 181, 336, 338, 
.339, 340, 360-64, 369, 370. 

Fisher, Dr. Joshua, 28, 30. 

Flint, William F., 214. 

Flume, the, Justus Conrad on 
discovery of, 102; discovery of, 
105; Harry Hibbard describes, 
105, 106; Harriet Martineau 
visits, 146; boulder carried 
away, 303. 

Flume House, Hon. Amelia Ma- 
tilda Murray at, 151; early 
history, 167; burned, 168; 
present one erected, 168, 341. 

Forest fires, 381-83. 

Foster, Daniel, 50, 52. 

Foster, John, map, 18. 

Fox, Charles James, poem on 
Chocorua, 12; poetry, 175. 

Fox, Daniel, 60. 

Fox family, Campton, 66. 



Franconia, settlement and his- 
tory, 58. 

"Franconia Mountain Notch," 
poem, 105. 

Franconia Notch, road destroyed 
in 1826, 97; road building, loi; 
earliest printed description, 
106; Hawthorne, 115; Thoreau, 
122; Parkman, 126; Starr King, 
130; E. T. Coke, 145; Harriet 
Martineau, 146; Sir Charles 
Lyell, 148; Fredrika Bremer, 
148; Bryant, 187; Thomas Cole, 
191-92; hotels, 166-69, 34l~42; 
National Forest purchases in, 

399- 
Franconia Range, shelter, 354; 
path, 356; forests acquired, 

397, 399-. 

Frankenstein, G. N., 38; pictures, 
203. 

Frankenstein Cliff, 15, 38, 203, 

Frankenstein Trestle, 38, 227. 

Franklin, Mount, named, 78. 

Freeman, Colonel Orville E., 240. 

Freeman, Mrs. Orville E., 330. 

French, Mr., landlord of Fabyan 
House, 337. 

Fresh Air Club, 276, 279. 

Frothingham, Richard, quoted, 
128, 129, 130. 

Frye, Caleb, 255. 

Frye, Chaplain Jonathan, 46. 

Frye, General Joseph, 39, 51. 

Frye, Joseph, Jr., 40. 

Frye, Nathaniel, 40. 

Frye, Nathaniel (fl. 1848), 255. 

Fryeburg, Maine, Indian remains, 
3; Indian village, 3; early his- 
tory, 39 ff.; fire, 47; and Con- 
■way, 51, 52; settlers flee to, 65; 
Whittier, 178; Lovewell's Fight 
commemorated, 186. 

Gallinger, Senator Jacob H., 390, 

391, 396. 
Garfield, Mount, lake, 212; path, 

356; named, 356; fire, 382. 
Gate of the Notch, 35, 89, 263, 

372. 
Gay, Sir Isaac Newton, 262. 
Gay, W. A., 66, 198, 203. 



418 



INDEX 



Geary, artist, 202. 

Geological Survey of New Hamp- 
shire, first, 204-08; second, 
208-14. 

Geological Survey, U.S., 396, 397. 

Geology, xxiii, 147, 204-15. 

"Geology of New Hampshire, 
The," 214. 

Gerry, S. L., 66, 202, 203. 

"Giant of the Hills," 75. 

Giant's Grave, tradition con- 
nected with, 14; first hotel at, 
73; burned, 77; second, 77, 79, 
80; echo at, 164; leveled, 336. 

Gibb, J. L., 162, 163, 167. 

Gibson, W. Hamilton, his illus- 
trations, xii. 

Gifford, Charles Ailing, 343. 

Gifford, Sandford R., 198, 200,201. 

Gile, Dr., of Hanover, 281. 

Gile, R. T., 374. 

Gilead, Maine, Indian raid, 65. 

Gilman, Samuel, Jr., 67. 

Glen, the, hotels in, 170-71, 
338-40. 

Glen Boulder Trail, 356. 

Glen Ellis Falls, 30, 357, 404. 

Glen Ellis House, 172. 

Glen House, first one built, 170; 
J. M. Thompson, proprietor, 
171; Millikens, 171, 338; Dr. 
Ball at, 287, 300, 301; era of 
prosperity, 338; burned, 338, 
339; second one opened, 339; 
completed, 340; burned, 340; 
stables, 340; present house, 
340; "Josh Billings" at first 
house, 341 ; Mount Washington 
fire discovered at, 363; salute at 
opening of new Summit House, 

369. 

Glines, Israel, 53. 

Glines, John, 53. 

Goffe, Colonel, 52. 

Gookin, General, 8. 

Gordon trail, 345. 

Gorges, Thorr;as, 22, 120. 

Gorham, Maine, 25. 

Gorham, N.H., 65; Starr King at, 
130; hotels at, 169, 170; rail- 
road reaches, 221 ; present Bos- 
ton and Maine railroad, 226. 



Grand Pierre, Emile, 217. 

Grand Trunk Railway, 221. 

Grant, S. Hastings, 217. 

Grant, General Ulysses S., visits 
Mount Washington, 242 ; coach 
ride, 243; Twin Mountain 
House, 335. 

Gray, Asa, memoir of Oakes, 37; 
accompanies Professor Tuck- 
erman, 121; and Honorable 
Amelia Matilda Murray, 150. 

Gray, Francis C, 36. 

Gray's Inn, 172, 173. 

Great Carbuncle, legend of, 15, 
116. 

Great Gulf, crossed by Dr. Rob- 
bins, 108; path into, 347. 

"Great Stone Face, The," 103, 
116, 117, 149. 

Greeley, Deacon, of Boston, 199. 

Greeley, Horace, 232. 

Greene, Benjamin D., 108. 

Greenleaf, Abbie Burnham (Mrs. 
C. H.), 169, 173. 

Greenleaf, Colonel C. H., 166, 
167. 

Griffith, George Bancroft, 175. 

Griggs, artist, 66, 203. 

Groveton, railroad reaches, 225. 

Guernsey, Mrs. Jessie, 105. 

Guernsey farm, 106. 

Guildhall, Vermont, Rosebrooks 
at, 72; birthplace of Ethan 
Allen Crawford, 75; Crawford 
lives at, 82. 

Gunthwaite. See Lisbon, 

Guyot, Arnold, explores the 
Mountains, 216, 217. 

Guyot, Mount, 217. 

Gyles, John, quoted, xxix. 

Hadley, Philip, 257. 

Hale, Edward Everett, member 
of first geological survey, 207; 
at house on Mount Washing- 
ton, 207, 230; Appalachian 
Mountain Club, 351; and 
national forest, 388. 

Halfway House, on carriage road, 
235, 243, 244. 

Hall, Dr. A. B., 286. 

Hall, Dr. Edward Hagaman, 17. 



419 



INDEX 



Hall, Joseph S., in Tuckerman's 
Ravine, 121; builds first Sum- 
mit House, 230; contractor on 
carriage road, 236; and Dr. 
Ball, 298, 299, 301. 

Hall, Judge Obed, inn, 93, 158; 
characterized, 158. 

Hanover, 35, 209, 316. 

Harding, Chester, 202. 

"Hark Hill," 65. 

Harkness, Harry S., 371. 

Harriman, Governor, 208, 384. 

Harriman, Mr., settler, 60. 

Hart, Warren W., on Darby 
Field, 20; reopens Davis Path, 

346. 
Hart, William, 203. 
Hart's Location, 73, 76. 
Hartshorn, Lucius, 305-07. 
Hartshorn, Mrs. Lucius, 231. 
Harvard College, 39. 
Harvey, James C, 277. 
Hatch, George W., engraving, 11, 

193- 

Havell, F. J., 194. 

Haverhill, N.H., 71. 

Haverhill and Franconia Iron 
Works, The, 59. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, his Great 
Carbuncle, 15; Ambitious Guest, 
86; Great Stone Face, 103; his 
relation to the White Moun- 
tains, 113 ff.; his visits, 114, 
115, 117; death, 114, 118, 174; 
on the early inns, 157. 

Hayes, Mount, 134. 

Hayes, President Rutherford B., 
248. 

Haystack, Great, 106. 

Haystack Lake, 212. 

Hazard, Ebenezer, 28, 30. 

Heard, Mr., 28. 

Hearne, Sergeant M. L., 326, 327. 

Henry, Professor Joseph, 310. 

Hermit Lake, 121. 

Hermit of the White Mountains, 
263. 

Hibbard, Harry, poet, 105. 

Higginson, Colonel Thomas 
Wentworth, 258. 

Hill, Henry, 89, 158. 

Hill, Thomas, painter, 200. 



Hill, Rev. Dr. Thomas, president 
of Harvard College, 212. 

Hill, W. P., 164. 

Hilliard, W. M., 372. 

Hitchcock, Charles H., on per- 
manency of the Profile, 105; as 
to name of Mounts Webster 
and Willard, 113; appointed 
State Geologist, 208; conducts 
second geological survey, 209- 
14; on Devil's Den, 219; and 
winter occupation of Mount 
Washington, 2>ioff. 

Hitchcock, President Edward, 
208. 

Hitchcock, E., Jr., 211. 

Hitchcock, Colonel John R., hotel 
proprietor, 170; lessee of old 
Tip-Top and Summit Houses, 
232; house on Mount Moriah, 
255; and winter occupation of 
Mount Washington, 311, 314. 

Hitchcock Flume, 213. 

Hoar, Senator George F., 390. j 

Hobart, Captain James, 48. 

Hoit, A. G., 202. 

Hoit, Benjamin, 66. 

Holden, L. L. ("Ranger"), 318, 
358. 

Holland, Bert, 372. 

Holland, Samuel, map, 18, 60. 

Holmes, Christopher, 65, 

Holyoke, Mount, 144. 

Hooker, General Joseph, 248. 

Home, Superintendent John, 362, 

363. 
Hotels, first at "Giant's Grave," 

built, 73, 157; burned, 77, 157; 

second, 77, 79, 80; early, 154- 

74; later, 331-44- 
House that Jack Built, 263. 
Howard, Governor Henry, 332, 

334- 
Howells, William Dean, 47, 184. 

Hubbard, , collegian, 28. 

Hubbard, Oliver P., M.D., 214. 

Hubbard, R. \y., 198. 

Hubbard, William, his History of 

New England, xxv; Indian 

Wars, 6, 18. 
Hudson River School of artists, 

189, 190, 194, 199. 



420 



INDEX 



Humboldt, Alexander von, 
quoted, x. 

Hunter, legend of, and church of 
St. Francis, 54. 

Hunter, Harry W., 272, 273. 

Huntington, Daniel, 201. 

Huntington, J. H., assistant on 
second geological survey, 209- 
13; winter on Mount Moosi- 
lauke, 210, 311-14; "Scenery of 
Coos County," 214; winter 
on Mount Washington, 3i6_^.; 
his winter ascents, 316, 318, 
319. 330; ascends by Davis 
Path, 346. 

Huntington's Ravine, 317. 

Hutchinson, Thomas, 58. 

Indian Island, 3. 

Indian remains, I, 2, 3, 48, 52, 
64. 

Indians of the White Mountain 
region, i, 2; their fear of the 
mountain summits, 13, 21; ac- 
company Darby Field, 20, 21; 
Col. Whipple's adventure with, 
53; Mrs. Rosebrook's adven- 
ture with, 72. 

Ingelow, Jean, 183. 

Inness, George, at West Ossipee, 
179, 200; at North Conway, 
200. 

Intervale, Whittier at, 181; junc- 
tion point, 228; British Em- 
bassy at, 372; forest reserva- 
tion meeting, 388. 

Iron Mountain House, 171. 

Iron works in Franconia, 58, 59; 
in Tamworth, 68. 

Irving, Washington, visits White 
Mountains, 142, 143. 

Island Pond, Vermont, 220, 221. 

Israel's River, 53, 54. 

Jackman, Richard, 68. 

Jackman, Royal C, 373. 

Jackson, 29, 31; settlement, 59; 
becomes a summer resort, 171 ; 
hotels at, 171-73; artists at, 
171, 202; first winter meeting of 
Appalachian Mountain Club, 
351- 



Jackson, Dr. Charles T., and first 
Geological Survey of New 
Hampshire, 205-07, 208. 

Jackson, Mount, named, 37. 

Jackson-Carter Notch Path, 355. 

Jackson Falls House, 171. 

Jacob's Ladder, 241, 244. 

James, Professor William, 69. 

Jefferson, 29, 35; settlement and 
history, 52 ff. 

Jefferson, Mount, named, 78; 
Phillips Brooks, 135; Edward 
Everett Hale, 207; Dr. Ball, 

295, 297- 

Jefferson, President Thomas, loi. 

Jefferson Highlands, 195, 375, 
376. 

Jefferson Notch Road, 374-76. 

Jenkins, an English trader, mur- 
dered, 6. 

Jenks, Edward Augustus, 175. 

Jewell, Sergeant W. S., 326. 

Jillson, Stephen, 63. 

Jilly, Paul, 60. 

John Anderson Memorial Road, 

373- 374- 
John's River, 53. 
Johnson, David, 197. 
Jordan, Governor Chester B., 

376. 
Joseph Story Fay Reservation, 

403- 
Josselyn, John, New England's 
Rarities Discovered, xxvi, xxvii; 
A ccount of Two Voyages to New 
England, 14; explores Moun- 
tains, 23; description, 23, 24. 

Kan Ran Vugarty, xxxi. 

Kancamagus, Indian sachem, 9, 
10. 

Kearsarge, Mount, 186, 210; 
houses on, 254, 255. 

Kearsarge House, built, 160. 

Kearsarge Tavern, 159, 160, 196, 
197, 198. 

Keenan, John M., 279-84. 

Keenan, Lawrence J., 283. 

Kellogg, Stanley T., 372. 

Kendall, Edward Augustus, his 
Travels, xxvii, 139; his discus- 
sion of the name White Moun- 



421 



INDEX 



tains, XXV, xxvi; quoted as to 
Willey House, 89; his tour of 
the Mountains, 139; on place 
names, 140. 

Kennebec, river, 19. 

Kensett, J. F., 196, 197, 199. 

Kent, Chancellor James, 107. 

Kent, Judge William, 107. 

Key, D. M., 248. 

Kilburn, Benjamin W., 318, 327, 
328, 329. 

Kilkenny, 382. 

Kimball, H. A., 316-18. 

King, Reverend Thomas Starr, 
his The White Hills, xi; quoted 
as to Indian legend, 3; Love- 
well's Pond, 47 ; stature of Ethan 
Allen Crawford, 75; Mount 
Monadnock, 120; Professor 
Tuckerman, 121; his connec- 
tion with the White Mountains, 
127, 128-31; his book pub- 
lished, 130; Richard Frothing- 
ham on the book, 130; at West 
Ossipee, 179; and Dr. Ball, 286. 

King Philip's War, 5, 9. 

King's Ravine, 130; path, 346. 

Kinsman, Mount, 213. 

Knight, Captain Artemas, 58. 

Knight's Tavern, 166. 

Lafayette, Mount, named, 106; 
early ascents, 106; Thoreau 
ascends, 124; railroad charter, 
238; house on, 255; fire, 382. 

Lafayette House, Harriet Mar- 
tineau at, 146; Fredrika Bre- 
mer at, 149; J. L. Gibb, 162; 
built, 167; acquired by Richard 
Taft, 168. 

Lakeman, Dr. Mary R., 330. 

Lakes of the Clouds Hut, 353. 354- 

Lancaster, N.H., settlement, 56, 
57; railroad reaches, 225. 

Landslides, 92, 94, 100, 302-04. 

Lane, George W., 236. 

Langdon, Reverend Samuel, 63. 

Lanman, Charles, 166. 

Larcom, Lucy, at Campton, 66; 
at Center Sandwich, 68; and 
Whittier, 176; assists Whittier, 
181, 182; Whittier befriends. 



182; her connection with the 
White Mountains, 183-85; on 
Mount Washington, 247. 

Latrobe, Charles Joseph, visit to 
White Mountains, 141-43. 

Laurentian Mountains, xxix. 

Lead plate, left on Mount Wash- 
ington, 31. 

Leavitt, F., 219. 

Leavitt, John T. G., 337. 

Lebanon, N.H., 223. 

Ledge, the, on east side of Mount 
Washington, 235; Dr. Ball at, 
288, 289, 299. 

Lesley, Professor J. P., 214. 

Lever, Representative Asbury P., 

393- 

Levett, Christopher, his Voyage 
into New England, xxv; his 
mention of the Mountains, 
xxiii; sees Passaconaway, 5; 
voyage to New England, 19; 
quoted, 19. 

Lewis, Samuel, map, xxiv. 

Libby, E., & Sons Company, 363. 

Lightfoot, chauffeur, 283, 284. 

Lindsey, John, 337. 

Line, Sergeant William, 328, 329. 

Lisbon, iron ore, 58; granted and 
settled, 61, 62; discovery of 
gold in, 62; Ammonoosuc gold 
field, 209, 210. 

Little, Reverend Daniel, 27, 28. 

Little, Henry, 108. 

Little, Colonel Moses, 57. 

Little, William, his History of 
Warren, quoted from, 6; pub- 
lished, 64; landlord of Prospect 
House, 257; and winter occupa- 
tion of Mount Moosilauke, 311. 

Littleton, settlement, 57; railroad 
reaches, 223, 224. 

Lloyd Hills, 60. 

Log Cabin, the, 355. 

Lok, Michael, map, 18. 

Lonesome Lake, 102. 

Longfellow, Henry W., poem on 
Chocorua, 12, 186; poems on 
battle of Lovewell's Pond, 46, 
185, 186; in White Mountains, 
114; association with Moun- 
tains, 185-86. 



422 



INDEX 



" Lord's Hill," 60. 

Lost River, 372, 373. 

Lovevvell, Captain John, his ex- 
peditions against the Indians, 
43; battle at Lovewell's Pond, 
44, 45; death, 45. 

Lovewell's Pond, battle, 42, 44- 
46; ballad, 46; Daniel Webster, 
47; Whittier, 178; Longfellow's 
poems, 185, 186. 

Low, A. A., 194. 

Lowe, Charles E., searches for 
remains of Weiss, 275; builds 
Lowe's Path, 345, 346. 

Lowe's King's Ravine Path, 346. 

Lowe's Path, 345, 346; Appala- 
chian Mountain Club, 355. 

Lower Bartlett, 159. 

Lumbering, 378-79. 

Lyell, Sir Charles, his visit to the 
White Mountains, 146-48. 

Lyon, John E., Boston, Concord, 
and Montreal Railroad, 224; 
second Summit House, 246; 
Moosilauke Mountain Road 
Company, 257. 

McClellan, General George B., 

102, 248. 
McMillan, Colonel Andrew, 159. 
McMillan House, 159. 
McNeill, William Gibbs, 222. 
McNorton, James, 63. 
Macomber, General David O., 

235. 314- 

Mad River, 185. 

Madison, Mount, named, 78; 
Phillips Brooks on, 135; Osgood 
Path, 347; huts, 351, 352; reg- 
ister placed, 358. 

Madison Hut, built, 351, 352; 
enlarged, 352; second hut, 352. 

Maine Central Railroad, 227, 228. 

Man at the Pool, 261. 

Maplewood Farm, 334. 

Maplewood Hotel, 334. 

Maps, 18-19, 208, 209, 210, 214, 

367. 
March, Colonel, 41. 
Marsh, David G., 257. 
Marsh, Sylvester, his services, 

237 ; conceives idea of mountain 



railway, 237; invents mechan- 
ism, 237; applies for a charter, 
239; begins construction, 239; 
designs first locomotive, 239; 
later life, 241; quoted as to 
Rigi railway, 242; gives per- 
mission for use of train shed in 
winter, 314; and Fabyan House, 
336. 

Martin, Homer, 201. 

Martineau, Harriet, her visit to 
the White Mountains, 145-46; 
as to building of Lafayette 
House, 167. 

Mason, Mrs. Ellen McRoberts, 
50, 159, 227, 255. 

Massachusetts, and Passacona- 
way, 6, 8; bounty for Indian 
scalps, 12, 41, 42; punitive 
measures against Indians, 41; 
and White Mountain Reserve, 
390. 

Massachusetts Historical Society, 
Collections, xxx, 28. 

Mayne, Edward, Robert, and 
Thomas, 59. 

Mayne, Sir William, 59. 

Maynesborough. See Berlin. 

Medford (dog), 325, 328. 

Mellen, Grenville, 84, 158. 

Memphremagog, Lake, 54. 

Mercator, Gerhard, map, 18. 

Merrill, C. H., 335, 375. 

Merrill, G. S., 202. 

Merrill, John, 261, 262. 

Merrill, Jonathan, 310. 

Merrill's Mountain House, 257. 

Merrimac, the, xxxi, 2. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
201. 

Milliken, Charles R., 338. 

Milliken, Weston F. 338. 

Mills, John, 64. 

Mitchell, James E., 263. 

Model of White Mountain region, 
212. 

Monadnock (Colebrook), 71. 

Monadnock, Mount, and Emer- 
son, 120. 

Monroe, Mount, named, 78. 

Montalban Ridge, 276, 346, 398, 
399. 



423 



INDEX 



Monument at Willey site, rock, 
86; board, 89, 95; Rosebrook, 
73; Crawford, 83. 

Moody, Josiab, 60. 

Moose Hillock or Moosehillock. 
See Moosilauke. 

Moosilauke, Mount, as view- 
point, 64; E. A. Kendall on 
name, 140; Lucy Larcom, 184; 

[^ first climbed, 255; Tip-Top 
House, 256, 258; account of 
ascent by Captain Partridge, 
256; winter occupation of, 311- 
14; forests acquired, 397. 

Moosilauke Mountain Road 
Company, 257. 

Morey, George W., 138. 

Moriah, Mount, 255. 

Morris, Honorable Corbyn, 58. 

Morristown. See Franconia. 

Morse, G. F., 348. 

Motor cycle, 372. 

Moulton, Jonathan, 68. 

Mounds, Indian, 3. 

Mount Clinton Road, 375. 

Mount Crawford House, built, 
73, 88, 89; later history, 158. 

Mount Lafayette House, north of 
Profile House, 169. 

Mount Lafayette House, south of 
Profile House, 168, 169. 

Mount Madison House, 170. 

Mount Pleasant House, 337, 338. 

Mount Pleasant Path, 356. 

Mount Washington Carriage 
Road, 234-36; accident on, 243. 

Mount Washington Hotel (Bret- 
ton Woods), 343-44, 376. 

Mount Washington Hotel Com- 
pany (Fabyan House), 336. 

Mount Washington House (at 
Fabyan), Horace Fabyan keeps, 
164; remodeled, 165; burned, 
163, 165, 336; stables de- 
stroyed, 336. 

Mount Washington Railway, 
John E. Lyon and, 224; history, 
237-42; empty train wrecked, 
244; slide-boards, 244-46. 

Mount Washington River, 15, 22. 

Mount Washington Road Com- 
pany, 235. 



Mount Washington Summit Road 
Company, 236. 

Mount Whittier. See West 
Ossipee. 

Mountain Coliseum, 121. 

Mountain View House (White- 
field), 342. 

Mularvey, Michael, 318, 319. 

Murphy, D. C, 326. 

Murray, Honorable Amelia Ma- 
tilda, her visit to the White 
Mountains, 150-52. 

Musgrove, Eugene R., his an- 
thology, 175; on Whittier as 
poet of the Mountains, 176. 

Myer, General A. B., 315. 

Myers, J. D., contractor on car- 
riage road, 235; and Bourne 
party, 270; and Dr. Ball, 288, 
289, 299. 

Nails, machine-made, first, 69. 

Nancy, story of, 55, 56; Mount, 
55; her surname, 55. 

Nancy's Bridge, 55. 

Nancy's Brook, 55. 

Nash, Timothy, discovers Craw- 
ford Notch, 26. 

Nash and Sawyer's Location, 26, 
70. 

Nashua and Lowell Railroad, 222. 

Nashua and Worcester Railroad, 
222. 

National Forest, 388-401. 

National Forest Reservation 
Commission, composition, 396; 
action in 1914, 398; approves 
further appropriations, 401. 

Nazro, John Coffin, 259-61. 

Nelson, S. A., raises fund for 
winter occupation of Mount 
Washington, 315; a member of 
party, 316; stay on Mountain, 
318, 320. 

New Hampshire, separate colony, 
42; poets, 175; first geological 
survey, 204-08; second, 208- 
14; railroads, 222-28; lumber- 
ing and other wood industries, 
378-80; forest fire protection, 
382, 383; ownership of forests, 
384; and national forest, 388- 



424 



INDEX 



89; Crawford Notch purchase, 
401-03. 

New Hampshire Forestry Com- 
mission, 403. 

New Hampshire Forests, Society 
for the Protection of, acquires 
Lost River tract, 373; work for 
fire protection, 383; advocates 
forest reservation, ' 387, 388; 
400; Crawford Notch Reserve, 
401 ; its reservations, 403. 

New Hampshire Iron Factory 
Company, 58. 

New Madbury, 59. 

New River, 32. 

New York Historical Society 
Gallery, 193. 

New York Public Library Galler- 
ies, 194, 199, 201. 

Newell, L. B., 318. 

"Newspaper train" on Mount 
Washington Railway, 245. 

Nichols, Rev. Dr. Harry P., visi- 
tor to Mount Washington, 247; 
ascent on June 30, 1900, 276; at 
opening of present Summit 
House, 369; accompanies Am- 
bassador Bryce, 372. 

Nickerson, David, 96. 

North Conway, settled, 52; Du- 
rand at, 194; Champney and, 
195-99; various artists at, 196 
ff.; Portland and Ogdensburg 
Railroad reaches, 227; coach- 
ing parades, 245; first field 
meeting of Appalachian Moun- 
tain Club, 351. 

North Stratford, 228. 

North Woodstock, railroad 
reaches, 226. 

Northern Peaks, named, 78; 
Phillips Brooks, 134; Edward 
Everett Hale, 207; first paths, 
345; first camp, 346; Madison 
Hut, 351; private camps, 355; 
forests, 397, 398. 

Northern Railroad of New Hamp- 
shire, 223. 

Northumberland, 71. 

Norumbega, 18. 

Norwich, and Worcester Railroad, 
222. 



Notch House (near Gate of 
Notch), 85, 122, 126, 129; ori- 
gin, 161 ; built, 162; Thomas J. 
Crawford keeps, 162; repaired 
and burned, 163. 

Notch House (Willey House). 
See Willey House. 

Notch Mountain, 113. 

Nowell, William G., Lowe's Path, 
345; builds first camp, 346; Log 
Cabin, 355 ; trail to Castellated 
Ridge, 356; puts A. M. C. reg- 
ister on Mount Adams, 358. 

Noyes, Nathaniel, 231. 

Number Four (fort), 54. 

Nuttall, Thomas, 108. 

Nutter, Mr., of Lancaster, 319. 

Oakes, William, his Scenery of the 
White Mountains, xi, 38; Cut- 
ler's collection, 32; botanical 
explorations, 37, 38; memoir, 
37; collects plants, 108; Mount 
Webster, 113; Sir Charles 
Lyell, 147; Flume House, 167. 

Oakes Gulf, 38. 

Observatory, first, 233, 234; 
second, 250, 251. 

"Old Man of the Mountain." 
See Profile. 

"Old Man of the Mountain," 
railroad engine, 224. 

Ordway, Alfred, 197. 

Ormsbee, Allan, 275-79. 

Osgood, Benjamin, innkeeper, 159. 

Osgood, Benjamin F., Bierstadt, 
202; winter ascent of Mount 
Washington, 306-07; builds 
paths, 247; places a roll for 
records on Mount Adams, 358. 

Osgood, Samuel, 40. 

Osgood Path, 347, 348. 

Osgoods, the, 47. 

Ossipee, town, Indian remains, 3. 

Ossipee Pond or Lake, 44, 69. 

Ossipee Range, 68, 129, 182. 

Ossipees, Indian sub-tribe, 2. 

Oxford Hotel, at Fryeburg, 
burned, 47. 



Packard, Alpheus S., 214. 
Packard, Winthrop, 218, 



425 



INDEX 



Page, David, 400. 

Page, Captain David, 57. 

Page, Jeremiah, 67. 

Page, John, 64. 

Page, Governor John, 204, 205. 

Page, Samuel B., 257. 

Paine, Ralph D., quoted, 406-07. 

Parker, Herschel C., 277. 

Parker, Walter, 277. 

Parker, Lieutenant Zachariah, 48. 

Parkman, Francis, in White 
Mountains, 124-27; exploit at 
Willey slide, 127; on preserva- 
tion of forests, 386. 

Parsons, Colonel Charles, 230. 

Parsons, Thomas, W., 87. 

Partridge, Captain Alden, 256. 

Pascataquack, 20. 

Passaconaway, chieftain, 4-8. 

Passaconaway, mountain, 67, 
210. 

Patch, Mrs. Daniel, 256. 

Patch, Joseph, 64. 

Path, first up Mount Washing- 
ton, 77; second, 78. 

"Patriarch of the Mountains," 

73- 84. . 
Paugus, Indian sachem, 45. 
Pawtucket Falls, 6. 
Peak House (Mount Chocorua), 

255. 
Peaked Hill. See Agassiz, Mount. 
Pearson, Samuel A., 77. 
Peary, Lieutenant (now Admiral) 

R. E., 248. 
Peck, Dr. W. D., 33, 37. 
Peek, W. H., 356. 
Peeling. See Woodstock. 
Pegwagget. See Pequawket. 
Pemigewasset House, 118, 173, 

174- 

Pemigewasset River, 48, 387. 

Pemigewassets, the, retire to 
Canada, 49; home, 64. 

Pendexter, , moves into Wil- 
ley House, 100. 

Pendexter, Honorable John, 158. 

Pendexter Mansion, 158. 

"Pennacook," quoted, 223. 

Pennacooks, the, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10. 

Pequawket, Indian village, 3, 40, 
42, 43- 



Pequawket, Mount, 254. See 
Kearsarge, Mount. 

Pequawket House, 159. 

Pequawkets, the, 2, 11, 12, 41. 

Perch Camp, 355. 

Perkins, Nathan R., 230, 231. 

Philbrick, David, 68. 

Photography on Mount Washing- 
ton, 327, 328. 

Pickard, Samuel T., 180, 182. 

Pickering, Dr. Charles, 38. 

Pickering, E. C, on Mount 
Washington, 247; founder and 
first president of Appalachian 
Mountain Club, 349. 

Pickering, W. H., 247; on Davis 
Path, 346. 

Picket Hill. See Agassiz, Mount. 

Pierce, Franklin, 117, 118, 158. 

Pigwackets. See Pequawkets. 

Pingree, David, 260. 

Pinkham, Captain Joseph, 59. 

Pinkham Notch, 59. 

Piscataqua, river, 5, 20. 

Pitman Hall, 159. 

Plato, a colored man, 65. 

Playfair, Sir Lyon, 248. 

Pleasant, Mount, named, 78; 
slides on, 100. 

Plummer, Joseph, 161. 

Plymouth, President Dwight, 34; 
settled, 48; history, 49, 50; 
hotels at, 173, 174; railroad 
reaches, 224. 

"Plymouth buck gloves," 50. 

Pone, artist, 203. 

Pool, the, Man at, 261. 

Poole, Fanny Runnells, 175. 

Poor, Peter, 65. 

Portland, Maine, 19, 34, 47; the 
Atlantic and St. Lawrence 
Railroad, 220, 221; connected 
with Montreal by rail, 221; 
Portland and Ogdensburg Rail- 
road, 227. 

Portland and Ogdensburg Rail- 
road, 227, 228; effect on travel, 
331 ; completed to Fabyan, 336. 

Portsmouth, N.H., 17, 

Potter, Chandler E., his History 
of Manchester, quoted from, 7, 
9, 10. 



426 



INDEX 



Potter, Bishop Henry C, 136. 

Pourtales, Count de, 142. 

Pratt, Henry Cheeves, 191, 194. 

Prescott, John, 67. 

Presidential Range, xxiii, xxix; 
chief peak named, 32, 33; other 
peaks named, 78; traversed by 
Dr. Robbins, 108; casualties 
on, 267-84; Dr. Ball, 284-301; 
paths on 345-56; forests ac- 
quired, 397, 398, 399. 

Prime, Dr. William C, on the 
discovery of the Profile, loi, 
102; his camp at Lonesome 
Lake, 102; description of the 
Profile, 104; on Richard Taft, 
167; and Mount Lafayette 
House, 169; on Mount Wash- 
ington, 247. 

Prince of Wales (Edward VH) ,195. 

Procter, George C, 318. 

Proctor, Edna Dean, uses Agio- 
chook, XXX ; her poetry, 175. 

Profile, Mount, 104. 

Profile, the, discovery of, loi, 
102; existence made known, 
103; Dr. Prime describes, 104; 
measurements of, 105, 213; 
Professor C. H. Hitchcock on 
its permanency, 105; Haw- 
thorne's story, 116; E. T. Coke 
on, 145; Fredrika Bremer on, 
149; Hon. AmeHa Matilda 
Murray, 151 ; Thomas Cole on, 
192; David Johnson's picture, 
197; S. L. Gerry's picture, 202. 

Profile and Franconia Notch 
Railroad, 225. 

Profile House, Hon. Amelia Ma- 
tilda Murray at, 151 ; built and 
opened, 168; enlarged, 168; 
first cottage at, 168; railroad to, 
225; General Grant at, 243; 
character of hotel, 341; torn 
down, 342; New Profile House 
built and opened, 342. 

Profile Lake, loi, 104, 151. 

Prospect House. See Tip-Top 
House on Mount Moosilauke. 

Pursh, Frederick, "Flora of 
North America," 33. 

Putnam, G. F., 257. 



Quebec Junction, 228. 
Quinebequy, 19. 

Railway, up Mount Washington, 
237-42; scenic, 366. 

Randolph, settlement, 63; rail- 
road, 226. 

" Ranger." See Holden, L. L. 

Ranney, Mrs. V. G., poem on 
Chocorua, 12. 

Raymond, Major Curtis B., 347. 

Raymond Path, 347. 

Records of ascent, 31, 37, 84; 
history of provision for, 357- 
58. 

Red Hill (in Moultonborough), 
President Dwight ascends, 34; 
Professor Silliman, 108; Tho- 
reau, 123; Starr King, 129; Har- 
riet Martineau, 145; Hon. 
Amelia Matilda Murray, 151; 
location and view, 151. 

Reservations, Appalachian Moun- 
tain Club, 357; 403-04. 

Revolutionary War, 53, 57, 63, 
66, 67; Rosebrook in, 71, 72. 

Riant, John, 62. 

Ribero, map, 18. 

Rich, John P., 235, 236. 

Richards, Reverend Charles A. L., 

133- 136, 137- 
Richards, T. Addison, at West 

Campton, 66, 203. 
Richards, Rev. Dr. W. R., 247. 
Ricker, engineer on Mount Wash- 
ington carriage road, 235. 
Ricker, Mrs. L. J., 160. 
Riggenbach, Nicholas, 242. 
Rigi railway in Switzerland, 242. 
Rindge, Captain, 65. 
Ripley, Henry Wheelock, 130. 
Riverside Cottage, 184. 
Road through Crawford Notch, 

25, 26, 27, 87. 
Robbins, Dr. J. W., 108. 
Rogers, Henry D., 214. 
Rogers, Nathaniel Peabody, 177, 

178. 
Rogers, Major Robert, quoted, 

xxvi; attack on St. Francis and 

return journey, 53, 54. 
Rogers, William B., 214. 



427 



INDEX 



Rogers, Dr., of Lancaster, 319. 

Romero, Senor, 248. 

Rosebrook, Eleazar, settles in 
Nash and Sawyer's Location, 
70, 72; Colebrook, 70; incidents 
of life there, 71; in Revolution- 
ary army, 71, 72; builds first 
inn, 73, 157; life, undertakings, 
and death, 73; epitaph, 73; 
President Dwight on, 74; burial 
place, 75; inn, 88; President 
Dwight at his house, 34, 35; 
Dr. Shattuk, 35. 

Rosebrook, Hannah, character 
and courage, 71; Northumber- 
land, 71; adventure with Indi- 
ans, 72; death, 73; burial 
place, 75. 

Rosebrook, Lucius M., 230. 

Rosebrook, William, 89. 

Rosebrook, the guide, xxviii. 

Rosebrook, , builds White 

Mountain House, 166. 

Rosebrook family, 70, 166. 

Rosebrook House, 166. 

Roth, Professor Edward, 103. 

Rumney, 65. 

Russell's Riverside Cottage, 184. 

Rutledge, Edward, 217. 

Saco, the, source, xxxi, 20, 140; 
Great Carbuncle, 15, 16, 399. 

Saco, town, 40. 

Saco Pond, 44. 

Sagadahoc, truce of, 9. 

St. Francis, Indian town in Can- 
ada, 9, II, 46; attacked by 
Rogers's Rangers, 53, 54. 

St. Lawrence and Atlantic Rail- 
road, 221. 

Sandoz, Ernest, 217. 

Sandwich, North, 183, 184. 

Sandwich, town, settlement and 
history, 67; Lucy Larcom, 183. 

Sandwich Addition, 67. 

Sandwich Dome, 67. 

Sandwich Range, 10, 66, 68. 

Sanford, 40. 

Sargent, Professor Charles 
Sprague, 386. 

Sawyer, Benjamin, partner of 
Nash, 26. 



Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, as to 
name Agiocochook, xxix; as to 
Waumbek, xxxi. 

Scott, Representative Charles F., 

394- 
Scott Bill, 394-95. 
Scott's Mills, 228. 
Scudder, Horace E., 69. 
Scudder, Samuel H., scientific 

work, 218; first editor of Appa- 

lachia, 218, 359. 
Searle, Jesse, 58. 
Seward, William H., 232. 
Shapleigh, Frank H., 202. 
Shattuck, A. D., 198. 
Shattuk, Dr. George, quoted on 

Crawford Notch turnpike, 27; 

explores White Mountains, 35. 
Shaw, Chief Justice Lemuel, 36. 
Shelburne, settlement, 65; Indian 

raid, 65; lumbering, 378. 
Shelters on the Mountains, 351- 

55- 

Shepard, Forrest, 106. 

Signal Service, U.S., 250; 322-26. 

Signal station, built, 250, 322. 

Sigourney, Mrs. L. H., 86. 

Silliman, Professor Benjamin, 
103, 106; describes and ex- 
plores the Crawford Notch, 
108, 109; ascends Mount 
Washington, 109; Willey Slide, 
127. 

Silver Cascade, 35, 194. 

Silver image of St. Francis, 54. 

Sinclair, John G., 161. 

Sinclair, Richard, 67. 

Sinclair House, General Grant at, 
243; development, 332. 

Singrawack, 53. 

Slade, Daniel D., accompanies 
Parkman, 126; quoted, 127. 

Slide-board, 244-46; 369. 

Slides. See Landslides. 

Slosson, Annie Trumbull, scien- 
tific work, 218; and Mount 
Lafayette House, 169; on 
Mount Washington, 247; her 
attachment to Summit House, 
361. 

Smillie, James, 197. 

Smith, James, 169. 



428 



INDEX 



Smith, Nathaniel, first settler in 

Fryeburg, 40. 
Smith, Sergeant Theodore, 316, 

318, 325. 
Smith, Honorable Thomas J., 

257- 

Snow, Nathaniel, 60. 

Snow arch in Tuckerman's Ra- 
vine, men dine in, 235; Sewall 
E. Faunce, 273, 274; party of 
Appalachians, 274. 

Snyder Brook paths, 355. 

Society for the Protection of New 
Hampshire Forests. See New 
Hampshire Forests, Society for 
the Protection of. 

Sokokis, the, 2, 3. 

Soltaire, 86. 

Sparhawk, Mr., 106. 

Spaulding, John H., his Historical 
Relics of the White Mountains, 
xiii; quoted, 13, 56; on Devil's 
Den, 219; in management of 
Tip-Top House, 231; and car- 
riage road, 235; on Nazro, 259, 
260; winter ascent of Mount 
Washington, 307-09. 

Spaulding, Mary B. (Mrs. Lucius 
Hartshorn), 231. 

Spaulding, Samuel Fitch, 231. 

Spencer, Hobart, 66. 

Spencer, Jared, 65. 

Spencer, Joseph, 66. 

Spooner, Thomas Jefferson, 161. 

"Spotted fever," 76. 

Sprague, Isaac, 38. 

Stag and Hounds, the, 66, 185. 

Stage office on Mount Washing- 
ton, 249. 

Stalbird, Granny, 56. 

Stanley, F. E., 372. 

Stanley, F. O., 371. 

Stanley, Oscar, 304. 

Stanley Slide, 304. 

Starbird, Granny, 56. 

Stark, John, captured by Indians, 

49- 

Stark, William, escapes from In- 
dians, 49; grantee of Bartlett, 
60. 

Starr King, Mount, 130. 

Start, Edwin A., 390. ^ _ 



Stearns, E. S., History of Ply- 
mouth, 50. 

Stevens, Alice Bartlett, 243. 

Stevens, William, 326. 

Stickney, Joseph, Mount Pleas- 
ant House, 338; builds Mount 
Washington Hotel, 343. 

Stille, Professor C. J., 136. 

Stillings Path, 345. 

Stinson, David, killed, 49. 

Stinson Lake, 49. 

Stockbridge, Helen E., compiler 
of bibliography, xiv. 

Stockwell, Emmons, 57. 

Stone, B. G., 197. 

Stone cabins on Mount Washing- 
ton, 79, 229. 

Storm of August, 1826, 91 ff. 

Story, Judge Joseph, 172. 

"Story of Jack," 263, 264. 

Strickland, Frederick, 268, 269. 

Strong, Rev. George Augustus, 
133. 136, 137- 

Stuart, Charles J., 77, 78. 

Stuart, R. L., 194. 

Stuart, Mrs. R. L., 201. 

Sugar Hill, 61, 342. 

Sullivan County Railroad, 226. 

Summit House, first one built, 
230; used as an employees' dor- 
mitory, 231; taken down, 231, 
251; second, built and opened, 
246, 247; cost, etc., 247; en- 
larged and improved, 249; 
storm of June 30, 1900, 276; 
Appalachian Mountain Club 
field meetings, 276, 351 ; corner- 
stone for new one laid, 366; 
large one planned, 366; present 
one built and opened, 367- 
69. , 

Summit House on Mount Moosi- 
lauke. See Tip-Top House. 

Sumner, Charles, and Fredrika 
Bremer, 149; on Mount Wash- 
ington, 232. 

Sunset Hill House, 342. 

Surprise, Mount, 134. 

Survey for scenic railway and 
Summit House, 366. 

Suydam, James A., 200. 

Swain, Darius, 256. 



429 



INDEX 



Sweetser, M. F., preparer of 
Chisholm's Guide-Book, xiii; 
his Handbook (Osgood's or 
Ticknor's White Mountains), 
xiii; historical material in lat- 
ter, xiii; on St. Aspinquid, 5; 
opinion of Mount Chocorua, 
10; his narration of the Cho- 
corua legend, lo-ii; corrects 
error as to Cutler's River, 32; 
on name of Conway, 50; as to 
house on Mount Kearsarge, 
255; on Professor Huntington, 
317; on leveling of Giant's 
Grave, 336; on "Josh Billings," 

341- 

Swindell, Jim, 55. 

"Switzerland of America," origin 
of application to White Moun- 
tains, xxxii. 

Taft, Richard, 167, 168. 

Taft, President William Howard, 
395. 

Talbot, F. A., 242. 

Tamworth, 11, 68, 69. 

Tamworth Iron Works, 68. 

Taylor family, Campton, 66. 

Tent on Mount Washington, 
229. 

Thaxter, Celia, 175. 

"Things as They Are," same as 
"Summer Tours," in. 

Thompson, Eben, 318. 

Thompson, Dr. Ebenezer, 62. 

Thompson, Rev. Frederick, his 
reissue of Willey's Incidents, 
xiv, 200. 

Thompson, George, 177. 

Thompson, J. M., buys first Glen 
House, 171; drowned, 171, 302, 
338; body found, 202; first per- 
son to drive up Mount Wash- 
ington, 236; and Dr. Ball, 287, 
288, 296, 300; bridle path, 171, 

347- 
Thompson, Samuel W., tavern at 
North Conway, 159; carries the 
mail, 160; builds Kearsarge 
House, 160; present hotel com- 
pleted, 161; Champney and 
other artists and, 196. 



Thoreau, Henry D., visits to 
White Mountains, 122-24; in- 
jured in Tuckerman's Ravine, 
124. 

Thorn Mountain House, 172. 

Thornton, 66. 

Ticknor, William Davis, 117. 

Tip-Top House, the old, opened, 
231; upper story added, 232; 
used by employees, 233; office 
o{ Among the Clouds, 233, 252; 
disused, 233; used again as 
hotel, 233, 365; escapes fire of 
1908, 364; burned, 369-71. 

Tip-Top House (so-called) on 
Mount Washington in 1840, 
207, 229, 230. 

Tip-Top House on Mount Moosi- 
lauke, 256, 257, 258. 

Token, The, an annual, 11. 

Torrey, Bradford, natural his- 
tory, 218; on Mount Washing- 
ton, 247. 

Torrey, Herbert, 217. 

Tower, Ambrose, 272. 

Train sheds on Mount Washing- 
ton, 249, 322. 

Trinity Height, 259. 

Tripyramid, Mount, 303. 

Trollope, Anthony, his visit to 
the White Mountains, 152-53; 
opinion of the scenery, etc., 

153- 
Trollope, Mrs. Frances, 141. 
Trudeau, Thomas, 375. 
True, Mr., settler, 65. 
Trumbull, Dr. J. Hammond, on 

meaning of Agiocochook, xxx. 
Tucker, Nathaniel, 36. 
Tuckerman, Professor Edward, 

32, 33; explores the White 

Mountains, 120; his botanical 

work, 121; his tastes, 121. 
Tuckerman's Ravine, 22, 31; 

name, etc., 120; Thoreau in, 

123; paths, 347. 
Tudor, Henry, tour of White 

Mountains, 140, 141. 
Tug-of-War Hill, 372. 
Turner, Honorable George H., 

281, 282. 
Turner family, Bethlehem, 161. 



430 



INDEX 



Turnpike, tenth New Hamp- 
shire, 27, 73, 87; partly de- 
stroyed, 97. 

Turnpike from Fabyan's to the 
Base, begun, 238; completed, 
241. 

Tweed, Professor Benjamin F., 
129. 

Twin Mountain House, Beecher 
at, 132, 133; history, 334, 335. 

Twin Mountain Range, Mount 
Guyot, 217; trail, 356; fire, 382, 

Twin Mountain Trail, 356. 

Tyler, Mr., proprietor of Profile 
House, 168. 

Tyng, Colonel, 42, 46. 

Upham, Warren, 214. 
Upper Bartlett, 60, 158. 

Valley Way, 356. 

Vermont Central Railroad, 223. 

Vermont Valley Railroad, 226. 

Verrazano, sees White Moun- 
tains, 17. 

Vials or Viles, John Alfred, 263. 

Vines, Richard, 22, 120. 

Viseu, bishop of, map, 18. 

Vose, George L., on second geo- 
logical survey, 209, 210; ascent 
of Mount Carrigain, 348. 

Wadsworth Athenaeum, 193. 

Wahwa, 45. 

Walker, Donald, 304. 

Ward, Julius H., his The White 
Mountains, xii; "White Moun- 
tain Forests in Peril," 386, 387. 

Warren, Jonas, 60. 

Warren, Admiral Sir Peter, 64. 

Warren, town, settlement, 64; 
summer boarders, 257. 

Washington, Mount, Passacona- 
way legend, 4; visibility of, 19; 
ascended by Darby Field, 20, 
21; by Josselyn, 23; by a rang- 
ing company, 24; by Captain 
Evans (twice), 25; by Bel- 
knap's party, 30; height esti- 
mated by Dr. Cutler, 32; re- 
ceives its name, 32, 33; Dr. 
Cutler ascends again, 33 ; height 



as computed by Dr. Bowditch, 
33; ascended by Dr. Shattuk, 
35; by Dr. Jacob Bigelow and 
party, 36; height computed by 
Dr. Bigelow's party, 36; first 
path, 77; bridlepath, 77; Ethan 
Allen Crawford guides people, 
77 jf.; ascended by Adino N. 
Brackett, John W. Weeks, 
Philip Carrigain, and others, 
77, 78; height computed by 
Brackett and others, 78; short- 
er path built, 78; the Misses 
Austin ascend, 79; first shelters 
built, 79, 229; first horseback 
ascent, 84, 85; Grenville Mellen 
ascends, 84; Western travelers' 
experience during storm of 
August, 1826, 99, 100; Profes- 
sor Silliman ascends, 109; Haw- 
thorne ascends, 115; Professor 
Tuckerman and, 121; Thoreau 
ascends, 122, 123; Parkman as- 
cends, 126; Starr King ascends, 
129; Phillips Brooks at, 136; 
Latrobe and Irving, 142; E. T. 
Coke, 144; Anthony Trollope, 
152; J. M. Thompson's path, 
171; Lucy Larcom, 183, 184; 
Bryant, 187; Edward Everett 
Hale, 207, 230; President 
Hitchcock, 208; height meas- 
ured by Guyot, 217; ascer- 
tained by Captain T. J. Cram, 
217; railroad reaches Base, 225; 
E. A. Crawford's tent, 229; 
hotels on, 230-33; first and sec- 
ond visits of Colonel Charles 
Parsons, 230; carriage road, 
234-36; height measured by 
Engineers Cavis and Ricker, 
235; railway, 237-42; President 
Grant visits, 242 ; fatal accident 
on carriage road, 243; empty 
train wrecked, 244; use of slide- 
boards, 244-46; building of 
second Summit House, 246, 
247; notables on, 232, 247, 248; 
post-office established, 249; 
stage office built, 249; signal 
station built, 250; second ob- 
servatory, 250; Among the 



431 



INDEX 



Clouds office, 251; old Summit 
House taken down, 251 ; Among 
the Clouds, 251-53; Captain 
Alden Partridge, 256; Trinity 
Height, 259; J. C. Nazro, 259- 
61; casualties, 26y ff.; Dr. Ball, 
287^.; winter ascents, 305-09, 
327-30; winter occupation, 
309-21; U.S. Signal Service, 
322-26; low temperatures re- 
corded, 319; velocity of wind, 
320, 322, 323; train-shed blown 
down, 322; William Stevens 
dies on, 326; Sergeant Cone in- 
jured, 326; winter ascents by 
women, 330; Stillings Path, 
345; Gordon Path, 345; Davis 
Path, 346; Tuckerman's Ra- 
vine Path, 347; records of as- 
cents, 357; great fire, 360-64; 
cornerstone of a new Summit 
House laid, 366; plans for sce- 
nic railway and large Summit 
House, 366; present Summit 
House, 367-69; "Climbs to the 
Clouds," 371, 372; Ambassador 
Bryce at, 372; acquired for 
National Forest, 397, 398. 

Washington House (Conway), 159. 

Waterville, 210. 

Watson, L. M., 356. 

Waumbek, the name, xxxi. 

Waumbek Hotel, railroad to, 226; 
history, 342. 

Waumhekketmethna, xxx. 

Webster, Daniel, teaches at Frye- 
burg, 47; plea at Plymouth, 49- 
50; visits Ethan Allen Craw- 
ford's and ascends Mount 
Washington, 112; name given 
to mountain, 113; Great Stone 
Face, 116; at Mount Crawford 
House, 158; at Jackson, 172. 

Webster, Colonel David, 173. 

Webster, John, 68. 

Webster, Colonel William, 173. 

Webster Tavern at Plymouth, 
173. 

Weed, Mr., makes augers, 69. 

Weed, Orlando, 67. 

Weeks, John W., the explorer, 
77, 78. 



Weeks, Representative (now Sen- 
ator) John W., 393. 

Weeks Bill and Act, 394-95, 396, 
399, 400, 401. 

Weiss, Ewald, 274, 275. 

Wells River, Vt., 223, 224. 

Wentworth, Governor Benning, 
26, 50, 51, 60, 67. 

Wentworth, General M. C, 172. 

Wentworth, Mark H., 52. 

Wentworth, Mount, 106. 

Wentworth, Sir Thomas, 63. 

Wentworth, , porter for 

Thoreau, 123. 

Wentworth Hall, 172. 

West Campton, 66, 185, 194, 203. 

West Ossipee (now Mount Whit- 
tier), 179, 182. 

West Thornton, mound, 3, 66. 

Wheeler, Amos, 60, 161. 

Wheeler, Vice-President William 
A., 248. 

Wheelwright, Reverend John, 5. 

Whipple, Colonel Joseph, 29, 52, 

53. 55. 56. 

Whistler, George Washington, 
222. 

Whitcher, Chase, 255. 

Whitcomb, Francis, loi. 

White, Franklin, 307-09. 

White, Colonel John H., 166, 

White Hills, use of the name, xxiii. 
See White Mountains. 

White Mountain Club, 348, 349. 

White Motintain Echo, 253, 254. 

White Mountain House, 81, 83; 
history of, 165, 166, 336. 

White Mountain National Forest, 
388-401, 403. 

White Mountain Notch. See 
Crawford Notch. 

White Mountain School of artists, 
189. 

White Mountain Station House 
(Gorham), 169. 

White Mountains, literature of, 
ix_^. ; extent and character of 
the region, xxiii; physical geog- 
raphy and geology, xxiii; their 
name and its origin, xxiii, xxiv; 
first appearance of name in 
print, xxv-xxvi; Indian names, 



432 



INDEX 



xxix-xxxi; as a river source, 
xxxi; as a summer playground, 
xxxi; dearth of historical inter- 
est, xxxii; Indian legend and 
history, lff.\ Indian legend of 
their origin, 13; early explorers, 
17^.; maps, 18, 19; explored by 
Darby Field, 20; by Thomas 
Gorges and Richard Vines, 22; 
by John Josselyn, 23; by two 
parties of men, 24; by Captain 
Evans, 25; Belknap's party, 
27^.; Dr. Cutler again, Dr. 
Peck and Dr. Bowditch, 33; 
visited by Reverend Dr. Timo- 
thy Dwight, 33, 34, 35; by Dr. 
George Shattuk, 35; by Dr. 
Jacob Bigelow and others, 35, 
36; by Dr. Boott, 36, 37; by 
Oakes, 37; first settlements, 
2,9 ff-; first hotel in, built, 73; 
various persons explore or visit, 
loi^.; Hawthorne in, 115; 
Emerson in, 118-20; Professor 
Tuckerman explores, 120-21; 
Thoreau in, 122-24; Francis 
Parkman visits, 124-27; Henry 
Ward Beecher in, 127, 131-33; 
Phillips Brooks in, 127, 133-37; 
T. Starr King in, 127, 128-31; 
Hosea Ballou, 2d, in, 128; early 
foreign visitors, I39#.; Wash- 
ington Irving in, 142, 143; early 
hotels and beginnings of region 
as summer resort, 154^.; poets 
in, 175-88; Whittier, 176-82; 
Lucy Larcom, 183-85; Long- 
fellow, 185-86; Bryant, 186-88; 
scenery described by Bryant, 
187-88; painters in, 188-203; 
importance in American art, 
190; Thomas Cole, 190-93; 
Henry Cheeves Pratt, 191, 
194; Thomas Doughty, 194; 
Champney and other artists 
irii 195 #•; later scientific ex- 
plorations of, 204 jf.; first 
geological surv^ey, 204-08; sec- 
ond geological survey, 208-14; 
early geological explorers, 214; 
Agassiz, 215-16; Guyot, 216, 
217; railroads to and in, 220- 



28; John E. Lyon and, 224; 
General Grant, 242, 243; note- 
worthy "characters" of, 259- 
66; casualties, 267-84; Dr. 
Ball, 284-301; landslides, 302- 
04; later hotels, 331-44; early 
trails in, 345-48; White Moun- 
tain Club, 348-49; work of 
Appalachian Mountain Club in, 
350-57. 358-59; Mount Wash- 
ington fire, 360-64; lumber in- 
dustry in, 378-79, 383-87; 
other wood industries, 379-80; 
forest fires, 381-83; history of 
National Forest Reserve, 388- 
401; recent changes in travel 
and business, 405-09; use as a 
winter resort, 408-09. 

White Mountains Railroad, 224, 
225, 336. 

White River Junction, Vt., 223. 

Whiteface, Mount, 67, 210. 

Whitefield, 60. 

Whitefield and Jefferson Rail- 
road, 226. 

Whiting, Leonard, 62. 

Whitney, Josiah Dwight, 206. 

Whittier, John G., uses Agio- 
cochook, XXX ; accepts Haw- 
thorne's "The Great Stone 
Face," 117; the poet of the 
White Hills, 176-82; friendship 
with Lucy Larcom, 182, 183. 

Whittier, Mount, 182. 

Wild River Valley, 382, 397. 

Wilde, Hamilton, 198. 

Wilder, Joseph, 63. 

Willard, Frances E., 356. 

Willard, Joseph, 113. 

Willard, Mount, carriage road, 
85; named, 113; Hon. Amelia 
Matilda Murray, 151 ; Anthony 
Trollope, 153; explorations on, 
213; Guyot, 217. 

Willard, Sidney, 113. 

Willey, Benjamin G., his Inci- 
dents in White Mountain His- 
tory, xiv; quoted, 13, 40, 53, 83; 
on the Willey disaster, 85, 87; 
on building of Willey House, 
89; death, 90; on Frederick 
Strickland, 268. 



433 



INDEX 



Willey, George F., 86. 

Willey, Captain Samuel, 60, 90. 

Willey, Samuel, Jr., 85; moves 
into Willey House, 90; thinks 
of removal, 90; body found, 
96. 

Willey, Mrs. Samuel, Jr., 90, 96. 

Willey, Selden C, 178, 183. 

Willey Brook Bridge, 227, 

Willey Disaster, 85^.; 109, no, 
141. 

Willey family, 70. 

Willey Hotel, built, 164; burned, 
343. 

Willey House, built, 89, 157; re- 
paired, 89; burned, 89; Ethan 
Allen Crawford runs it, 89; 
Samuel Willey, Jr., moves into, 
90; Pendexter moves into, 100; 
no, III; engraving of, in; 
repaired by Horace Fabyan, 
164; Thomas Cole at, 191; 
burned, 343. 

Willey Slide, occurs, 92 ; Professor 

i Silliman, 109, 127; Parkman 
climbs, 127; Sir Charles Lyell 
examines, 147; Thomas Hill's 
painting, 200. 

Williams, artist, 203. 

Williams, M. B., 206. 



Williamson, John, 197. 

Willis, N. P., 194, 196. 

Wilson, Edward L., Mount 
Washington in Winter, 305; 
on Mount Washington in win- 
ter, 319, 327, 328. 

Wilson, General John, 77. 

Wind velocity on Mount Wash- 
ington, 320, 322, 323. 

"Wine Hills" map, 18. 

Winthrop, Governor John, Jour- 
nal, XXV, 20; account of Darby 
Field's expeditions, 20, 21; ac- 
count of Gorges and Vines's 
exploration, 22. 

Wireless telegraphy , between 
huts, 354. 

Wonnalancet, Indian sachem, 9. 

Wood, William, his New Eng- 
land's Prospect, quoted from, 8. 

Woodbridge, F., 318. 

Woodbury, Captain Lot, 161. 

Wood-pulp industry, 379, 380. 

Woodstock, mound, 3; granted 
and settled, 62, 63. 

Wyman, Ensign Seth, 46. 

Yale College, 34. 

Zealand Valley, 381, 385, 399. 



Fairbanks! 



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fairview 

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8^ N. MANCHESTER. O. ♦,,,•* ^0 ^'•••©•*^'*^ CL 

^r INDIANA 46962 j . o^ 'Oi, .0 ••!rl/^ '^ V • ♦ • »* ^ 



HECKMAN -=, 

BINDERY INC. |«' 

^^^ AUG 89 



